Printer Control

[Brian K. White]

On 8/11/2010 1:20 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
> On 8/11/2010 1:06 PM, Rodgers Hemer wrote:
>> filePro 5.0.14/SCO 5.07
>>
>> I want to set destination printers on a work group basis.  I would like to avoid having to set the printer in the output format as a report may be requested by more than one work group.  Placing PFPRT in the user's .profile pointing to the applicable filePro printer did not work, resulting in the following  message:
>>
>> ***A SYSTEM ERROR HAS OCCURED***
>> Cannot open print command
>> adminprt: Permission denied
>>
>> What is the proper method to achieve the intended result?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Rodgers Hemer
>> 206.523.2329
>> r.hemer at w-link.net
>> _______________________________________________
>> Filepro-list mailing list
>> Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/filepro-list
>>
>
> exoport PFPRINTER=printername in the users .profile.
>
> A better answer but requires more programming work is to store such
> per-user settings in a filepro file that the users themselves can
> administer instead of having an operating system admin manually edit
> .profile files. The .profile variable will end up affecting all filepro
> apps without modifying any of them, but isn't very flexible or
> self-maintaining. Using a filepro file means the users can admin it, but
> you'd have to put code all over the place to look up the users settings
> and use printer "printername" commands and/or putenv
> "PFPRINTER","printername"  etc as appropriate.
>

Sorry, forgot you said SCO 5.0.7
The correct syntax would be
PFPRINTER=printername ; export PFPRINTER

LPDEST was another good suggestion but you must understand that operates 
at the OS level rather than the filepro level. That would work IF your 
filepro config file had a printer defined that had no printer name on 
the lp command line (no "-d printername") AND that printer was the 
filepro default, AND if the other printers all used the same type of 
print codes as the main default (ie: hplaser). If all that is true, then 
setting LPDEST will cause filepro to do nothing different at all, but 
"lp" will do something different based on the value of LPDEST.

There are really many ways to to get the sort of result you want. How 
fancy do you want to get? For instance, we don't even use filepro 
printer config or any system lp spooler at all any more except in a
dwindling few special cases. Almost all printing goes to whatever 
printer is near the user whether they are in the office or at home or on 
vacation because almost all printing goes through the terminal emulator 
instead of throughthe OS print spooler.
PFPRINTER is either unset or it's setting is irrelevant because it is 
overridden by PFPRTC=hplaser (means use hplaser print codes but says 
nothing about where to print to) and PFPT=on (says to print to the 
terminal via passthrough, but says nothing about what type of print 
codes to use) and those same two variables are always set the same for 
all users so no maintenance in 99% of instances.

-- 
bkw