Printing with the mp Utility

As a print filter, mp generates a pretitified version of contents in PostScript format. The PostScript output file contains glyph images from Solaris-resident scalable or bitmap fonts, depending on each locale's system font configuration for mp. Now it is enhanced in the Solaris 9 environment to print files with different encoding text in corresponding asian locales.

A typical command line for printing a file containing Traditional Chinese characters, with or without ASCII/English characters, would be as follows:

system% mp -L $LANGfilename | lp -d  printer

The file may contain ASCII/English characters as well as Traditional Chinese. Refer to the mp(1) man page for more detailed information.

You can also use the utility as a filter, as the utility accepts stdin stream:

system% cat  filename | mp | lp

You can set the utility as a printing filter for a line printer. For example, the following command sequence tells the printer service LP that the printer lp1 accepts only mp format files. This command line also installs the printer lp1 on port /dev/ttya. See the lpadmin (1m) man page for more details.

system% lpadmin -p lp1 -v /dev/ttya -I MP
system% accept lp1
system% enable lp1 

You can add the lpfilter utility for a filter by using the lpfilter(1M) command as follows:

system% lpfilter -f filtername -F pathname

The lpfilter command tells LP that a converter (in this case, xutops) is available through the filter description file named pathname. The pathname can be determined as follows:

Input types: simple
Output types: MP
Command: /usr/bin/mp 

The filter converts the default type file input to PostScript output using /usr/bin/mp.

To print a UTF-8 text file, use the following command:

system% lp -T MP UTF-8-file

For more details on the mp(1) command, refer to the mp(1) man page.