Hello all,

I am new to Universe, after migrating from Pick D3 after 25+ years.
The version we have is really close to Pick, so not too much in the
way of problems with the exception of the spooler/printer.

Our software vendor uses a browser based front end, and only allows
for printing their programs/reports to a pdf file. They will not help
us to assign a printer to the back-end, and say they won't support it
because it isn't needed. They say a system printer in Universe is too
hard to maintain and support.

I have a number of great programs/procs that worked well in
conjunction with the spooler, I would do all the formatting of the
info in Pick, send to the spooler, and then ftp the rept over to excel
or access.

This worked beautifully, and took about 20 less steps to do than any
odbc or sql interface that we had.

I found it hard to believe that there are no IBM users out there using
a system printer. I really want a system printer. I am having a
rough time with screen prints, and want my old programs to spool to a
hold file and/or the system printer.

I found an AIX consultant who assigned me two printers in AIX (I am
woefully AIX-deficient). However, the AIX Consultant did not know
anything about Universe. I would like to create these two new
printers in Universe, but am unsure as to the best way to do that.

Does anyone know a good consultant that can help me with this? I
would also like a better understanding of the spooler in UV, a lot of
my programs are spooling to a hold file, but I have no idea where that
hold file is, or where they are going.

Any help/comments at all would be welcome.

Thanks,
Sueglo

Talk to Dave Taylor at Sysmark
<http://www.sysmarkinfo.com/Spoolerplus.asp>

hth
Colin Alfke
Calgary Canada

sueglo wrote:

"sueglo" <suefab2000 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Sueglo,

The first place for you to start is looking through the Administering
UniVerse, UniVerse System Description, and Guide for Pick Users manuals
(PDF files). This should give you some good information about the printing
system, how UniVerse works, and how UniVerse (UV) relate to Pick.

Setting up a UV spool queue to respool jobs to an AIX lp queue is pretty
simple. That said it would take many time longer to explain it than to
actually do it. All UV spool queues are defined in a text file call
sp.config that lives in the UV spooler directory (usually /usr/spool/uv).
There is one line per printer and it can look something like this:

lp /dev/lp BAUD 9600 XOFF STARTANY ON PARITY NONE DATABITS 7
LP0 /dev/null0 DRIVER /usr/spool/uv/LP0.drv FORMS 0 BAUD 9600 XOFF STARTANY
ON PARITY NONE DATABITS 8
LP20 /dev/null20 DIRVER /usr/spool/uv/LP20.drv FORMS 20 BAUD 9600 XOFF
STARTANY ON PARITY NONE DATABITS 8

The first line is a default entry created at install time so we will ignore
it. I have created entries for LP0 and LP20 which have form names of 0 and
20. Since they are not actual devices on the server I have to create null
device names for them. I will explain the significant parts for LP0:

LP0 Printer name (not always the same as form name)
/dev/null0 Path to device name (used to build lock file if we are using a
driver to respool)
DRIVER /usr/spool/uv/LP0.drv Path to a shell script that will take
standard input (our print job) and respool it to lp)
FORMS 0 The form name of our printer
.... Boiler plate that is used if this printer is attached to a real
serial port

A sample driver file might look like this:
$ cat /usr/spool/uv/LP0.drv
cat - | lp -d myAIXprinter

This would respool the job to a printer called myAIXprinter under lp.

To create the null devices for the device entries:

ln -s /dev/null /dev/null0
ln -s /dev/null /dev/null20

Be carefull! If you mess up the ln command and destroy the /dev/null device
your server will be broken!

In short, read the documentation and create your own printer. Oh, if you
send jobs to a "hold" file they will end up in one of two place depending on
how the SETPTR command is set. The will be in the spool queue (list them
with SPOOL -LIST from TCL) or they will be in the &HOLD& file (list them
with LIST &HOLD& from TCL). Good luck.


Kevin Sproule

On Jun 6, 5:04 am, sueglo <suefab2... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:
Hi Sueglo,

Welcome to Universe.

<AD>

As you have discovered, Universe/AIX does have a spooler, but it does
not support the same print commands or work the same way as your D3
spooler.

In addition, Universe on Windows has no print spooler at all.

For these reasons, we developed a generic Pick print spooler for both
Universe and Unidata.

It is called SpoolerPlus, and it supports the generic Pick spooler
commands that you are used to using in D3 - eg. SP-ASSIGN, STARTPTR,
LISTPTR, LISTPEQS, SP-EDIT, etc.

SpoolerPlus is running on UV/AIX and, when I last checked, the User
had over 40MB of print jobs on hold in the spooler.

And, SpoolerPlus has no artificial limits on the size of either a
single print job or the total of all print jobs in the spooler.

SpoolerPlus is also running on UV/Windows XP/Pro, 2000Pro, 2000Server
and 2003, so it's a very versatile product.

I will be glad to explain how the Universe spooler works and answer
any questions you may have about SpoolerPlus.

We can also arrange a demo and provide you with a evaluation copy of
SpoolerPlus if you wish.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Dave Taylor
Sysmark Information Systems, Inc.
49 Aspen Way
Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274
USA
800-SYSMARK (800-797-6275)

</AD>

Sueglo
I would recommend you check out the UniVerse User Group at www.u2ug.org
Posting other there may result in more reponses to your question.

Mark