Creating Print Actions for Filtered Data or Data Ready to Print

The desktop print utility /usr/dt/dtlp provides functionality on top of the lp subsystem. It gathers lp print options and prints the specified file.

Your application can use dtlp if either of the following conditions is true:

• The data files do not need to be processed before they are sent to a printer.

• Or, your application provides a filter for converting its data files to a ready-to-print form.

For more information about dtlp, see the dtlp(1) man page.

If the file is ready to print, the Print action runs dtlp in the EXEC_STRING.For example:

ACTION Print 
{
  ARG_TYPE       ThisAppData
  EXEC_STRING       dtlp %Arg_1%
}

If the application provides a conversion filter, the filter must be run before running dtlp. For example:

ACTION Print 
{
 	ARG_TYPE				MyAppData
 	EXEC_STRING				/bin/sh `cat %Arg_1%| filter_name | dtlp`
}

where filter_name is the name of the print filter.