Printing Problems

All of our printers are either PostScript printers or are set up to act as PostScript printers. So they only print PostScript, and any file you want to print will need to be turned into PostScript before it can be printed. Ordinary ascii files will be converted to PostScript automatically by the print spooler.

Various problems arise when trying to print. These will be enumerated and solutions given here. Someday soon. I hope. Here is a start

• I tried to print a pretty postscript document and all I got was a long unreadable listing.
• I tried to print a pretty postscript document and nothing came out, and I didn't get any signs of error.
• The printer daemon sent me mail of a problem, but everything looks okay.
• The printer daemon sent me mail of a problem, but not enough information to know what went wrong.
• Should I try ghostscript to check?
• The printer is out of paper, ink, or jammed.
• The printer queue is stuck.

• I got a long listing
  The lpr printing command tries to determine if your file is an ascii file which should be converted to postscript, or is already a postscript file and should be sent to the printer as is. But Postscript files are files consisting of ordinary ascii characters, so they might be considered as ascii files, and it is conceivable (but not likely) that you really wanted that listing of the contents of the file rather than the image it specifies.
  The print spooler distinguishes whether to print as is or to print as ascii characters by looking at the first two characters of the file. If the first two characters are %!, the file is considered to be already in PostScript and will be sent to the printer as is. Otherwise, it will be considered to be a file of which you want a listing.
  Note that first two characters means what it says. There must not be a blank line, or a space or tab or anything else before the %!.
• All went fine, but nothing came out
  First, use the lpq command to see if the file is still on the queue. Sometimes the printer gets jammed, sometimes there is a file ahead of yours which is taking a long time. Note that even a single page can take several minutes.
  If your print job is no longer on the queue, and you are sure it was submitted, the problem might be that your job did not ask the printer to actually print anything. A Postscript file usually specifies an image with a lot of commands and then tells the printer to print it with a showpage command. Encapsulated Postscript files often do not have that showpage command in them, so the printer sets up the image in its memory, and then is all done with your job and goes on to the next without printing anything. The encapsulated postscript file expects to be included as part of a page, say by latex, and that page is supposed to have the showpage command.
  One way to see if this is the problem is to use ghostscript, gs, on the file. Ghostscript will stop on reaching each showpage, with a message

  >>showpage, press <return> to continue<<

  Unlike a real printer, ghostscript starts drawing on your screen when it gets the commands to set up the image, so you will see the image whether or not there is a showpage, but you will not get the above message if the showpage is missing. [To get out of ghostscript, type control-C in the text window, not the graphics one.]
  If you really want to print an encapsulated postscript file that doesn't have a showpage, epsprint filename might work.
• All went fine, but mail said there was a problem
  Right now, I don't know enough to make anything of this. If you feel like being responsible you might check the queue, which should either be empty or have a job which is active, other than the one you had the problem with. If that is not the case, inform John Doroshenko .
• All I got was an uninformative mail message
  If you feel up to trying to figure out what went wrong, and want more detailed information, it might be available by logging on to the computer which controls the printer in question, and looking at the file /usr/adm/printername-log. To find out which computer controls the printer, look in the file /etc/printcap for the name of the printer in question, and find the item which says :rm=hostname. Then log onto hostname.
• Should I try ghostscript to see what is wrong?
  You can try to view your file with gs, our ghostscript viewer, to see what the problem might be. The command gs filename will open a window in which it tries to display your file. In the window in which you gave the command you will get diagnostics. It may well end with Error: /undefined in SomeCommandName, which gives you a hint if you can tell where SomeCommandName might have come from. For example, if SomeCommandName is MathPictureStart in a file you got from Mathematica, you will realize that what Mathematica calls Postscript isn't, until you fix it. Such problems are discussed in here.
• Printer needs attention
  Users are expected to add paper when necessary. There should a supply in the vicinity of the printer. If not, for printers in 381, 277, and TP 103, you can ask Laszlo Varga laszlo@physics to bring some.
  If the cartridge is actually low, tell or send email to John Doroshenko. for SPARCprinters in 383, 354, 376 or TP103 or other printers.
• The printer queue is stuck.
  First find out what lpq -Pprintername says the problem is. If it is a network printer refusing connections, turn the printer off for 10 seconds, and then back on. If this doesn't work, of if the problem is something else, tell or email John Doroshenko or Joel Shapiro or User Support .