PrintSetup

Orac Printing
=============
This is a new and fairly experimental departure for Orac.

The printing screen takes the text from calling screen and creates a
Canvas widget, which it then "populates" with the text.

You have a few main print screen options:


*. Print Text
-------------
If you have inserted a valid "System Print Command" (more later), you can
select this option, which will create a PostScript file (as shown in
the top right of the screen) and then send it via your command, to your
PostScript printer.

If a PostScript file already existed, this will be overwritten with a
new one.


*. PostScript File
------------------
This does pretty much what the last option does, except it does not send
the newly created PostScript file to a PostScript printer, via a command
of your choosing.  It simply creates the file.  You may have your own
PostScript printing tool on your system (such as GhostView), with which
you view/printout such files.  GhostView is an Open Source tool, which has many
different versions for many different OSes, including Solaris, Linux and
Win32.  You may be able to find out more from:

=> http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/


*. Portrait/Landscape Switch
----------------------------
This simply toggles your PostScript output file to either be Portrait or
Landscape, depending on your preference.


*. Preferred Printer Paper Size
-------------------------------
A complete range of normal Printer Paper sizes are available, for you to 
select.  The PostScript file you create will be configured accordingly.


*. System Print Command
-----------------------
At this time, we are going to leave this completely to you.  Basically,
input a command line string, which will take a filename on your system,
and send it correctly to your PostScript printer.

We do no validation on the correctness of your command, except check it is
a string of non-zero length.  Because of the complexity of the many different
OSes and network configurations out there, we will leave this setup 
entirely down to you.

For example, under Solaris, you may want to use:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

=> lp 

(if your default printer is the required PostScript printer)


=> lp -d MyPostScriptPrinterName 

(where MyPostScriptPrinterName is not your default system printer)


Under WinNT:
+++++++++++
You may need to do some set-up, to get a valid PostScript command line
printing command to operate effectively.

You may be able to manage to get "lpr" to work on your NT box.

If you install the "Microsoft TCP/IP Printing" Service and start
it in the services control panel then lpr becomes available. You can then
print postscript files (assuming you have a postscript printer) with a
command such as this:

=> lpr -S MyComputerName -P MyPrinterName -o l 

The -o l option is needed so that the text in the postscript will be
interpreted by the printer - otherwise you get to look at the real
postscript code - which is likely not what you want. 

(Thanks to Kevin Kitts for digging out this WinNT information.  If any
Win32 Users would like to send us more detailed information on this,
they are very welcome to do so).


Save of Options
---------------
On exiting Orac, your printing preferences will be stored in your local
Orac Home directory.  When you start the program up again, you should not
have to re-input them, on the Printing screen.


Future Extension of Orac Printing Options
=========================================
If anybody using Orac would like to help us extend the range of Printing 
options, please let us know.  We are more than happy to receive your
"new, improved" orac_Print.pm modules, as long as you follow our general
guidelines of keeping Orac entirely Perl, and entirely OS and Database 
independent.  Happy Perling :-)

(Unless someone comes forward, we currently intend to do very little more 
on the printing front, other than this very basic printing capability.  
This may change, but not in the near-term future.)

Rgds,
AndyD
andy_j_duncan@yahoo.com

20th Sept 1999

EOF
