Printer Control

[Rodgers Hemer]

On Aug 11, 2010, at 10:43 AM, Brian K. White wrote:

> 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.
> 
Thanks for the solutions for printer selection.  I used the first and simplest as if fit the situation perfectly.

Rodgers Hemer