Overview of Printers and Printing (User, System Administrator, and Flexfields Help)


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Overview of Printers and Printing

This essay explains how Oracle Applications handles printing instructions. The executive summary presents the major relationships between printing functions, related forms, and Oracle Applications. More detailed explanations follow the executive summary. See: Summary of Oracle Applications Printing.

Executive Summary

Oracle Applications reports are generated by Oracle Reports. A completed report is sent to the operating system by the concurrent manager, which issues an operating system print command, or calls a custom print program that issues an operating system print command.

Oracle Reports and report generation

Page break, carriage return, line feed, text bold on/off, and text underline on/off instructions within the output file are defined by values in an SRW driver file.

Page break, carriage return, and line feed instructions that are issued before the output file is to be printed or after the output file is printed must be entered in an Oracle Applications printer driver's initialization or reset strings, which are defined by the Printer Drivers form.

SRW Drivers and Oracle Applications Printer Drivers

When the report is not to be printed (number of copies = 0 and the target printer field is blank), Oracle Reports uses the SRW driver named by the print style in the Print Styles form.

When the report is to be printed (number of copies > 0) Oracle Reports uses the SRW driver named by the Oracle Applications printer driver in the Printer Drivers form.

The dimensions of a report are determined by the columns and rows values in the print style, defined using the Print Styles form. These values override the width and height values in an SRW driver file.

Concurrent Manager Issues or Calls a Print Command

When a report is completed, the concurrent manager prepends an initialization string to the output file. The initialization string is defined using the Printer Drivers form.

The concurrent manager appends an reset string to the output file. The reset string is defined using the Printer Drivers form.

An Oracle Applications printer driver is typically executed in one of two methods, by issuing a print command or calling or print program.

When the printer driver method is Command, the concurrent manager can issue an operating system print command and arguments, entered in the Arguments field of the Printer Drivers form.

When the printer driver method is Program, the concurrent manager can call a custom print program, named (along with its path) in the Name field of the Printer Drivers form. Arguments to the program may be entered in the form's Arguments field.

Concurent Manager can provide values for arguments

The concurrent manager may provide values for four arguments to an operating system print command or custom print program:

the name of the file to be printed

the operating system name of the target printer

the title of the file, which appears on a header page if it is printed

the number of copies to be printed