3 UNIX Implementation Details

Mapping Printer Fonts to X Window Fonts

For compliance with the font-naming scheme recommended in X11, Release 5, Xprinter requires a font name mapping between the names of the available fonts on the printer and the names of the equivalent fonts in the standard XFLD format.

The xprinter/psstd.fonts file contains the font mapping for all PostScript printers. This file contains two fields: the face name of the printer font and the corresponding X Window font name.

If your printer contains fonts that are not listed in psstd.fonts, you must add an entry for the font in psstd.fonts to access the font on the printer. Xprinter uses the font naming convention of X11, Release 5 to specify scalable fonts. A point size of zero represents a scalable font. For instance, if the scalable font Helvetica exists on the printer, the font name returned from the file would have the following format (assuming a 300 DPI printer):

-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--0-0-300-300-p-0-iso8859-1

Customizing Printer Description Files

Xprinter uses the Adobe PostScript Printer Description (PPD) files to describe model-specific features such as the available RAM, fonts, papers trays, supported paper sizes, and other printer-specific information.

Adobe defined the PPD standard so that technologies like Xprinter can be printer independent. Adobe and other printer manufacturers provide PPD files for all PostScript-compatible printers.

Xprinter contains PPD files for about two hundred different printers and plotters. They are installed in xprinter/ppds. You can obtain additional printer PPD files from either Adobe or the manufacturer of your printer.

Modifying Default Printer Setup Values

Xprinter retrieves default printer setup information from the file .Xpdefaults in your home directory. If this file does not exist, Xprinter reads the information from the file xprinter/Xpdefaults. The Xprinter Printer Setup widget writes modifications to the default setup in $HOME/.Xpdefaults. However, it never modifies the default information in the file xprinter/Xpdefaults. If the file $HOME/.Xpdefaults does not already exist, the Xprinter Printer Setup widget creates it.

Although the most common way to modify the default Printer Setup values is with the Printer Setup widget, which updates $HOME/.Xpdefaults automatically, you can also edit this file with any text editor and make changes directly.

You may make the modify the $HOME/.Xpdefaults file to do the following:

• Define printer ports

• Match printer types to defined ports

• Specify the default printer

• Specify printer-specific options

Defining a Port

A printer port is an alias for the print command. It is defined in the [ports] section of $HOME/.Xpdefaults and appears as part of the Printer Name in the Printer Setup dialog. For example, the following is the first Printer Name in the Printer Setup dialog before you make any changes to $HOME/.Xpdefaults:

AppleLaserWriter v23.0 PostScript on FILE:

In this Printer Name, FILE: is the port name. To send output to a printer instead of a file, you must define a port for each printer you want to direct output to. Port entries in the [ports] section have the following format:

port= print_command

The print_command is the command for sending output to the printer port. For example, suppose you have two printers: ORION and SIRIUS. Your [ports] section may look like the following example:

[ports]
ORION=rsh bandit "lp -d ps1"
SIRIUS=rsh bandit "lp -d ps2"

In this example, both printers are connected to the system bandit, so the print command is a remote shell command executed on bandit. ORION is a PostScript printer, so the command lp -d ps1 is executed on bandit to print to ORION. SIRIUS is another PostScript printer, so the print command executed on bandit to print to SIRIUS is lp -d ps2.

If you have a printer connected to your local system, you need to add an entry for it as well. For the local printer, you need to add an entry similar to the following:

[ports]
ORION=rsh bandit "lp -d ps1"
SIRIUS=rsh bandit "lp -d ps2"
LOCAL=lp -d ps

Your printer port can be any name you choose except FILE:, which is the only reserved port name. It causes Xprinter to create a print file formatted specifically for the specified printer type.

You must create an entry in the [ports] section for every printer you wish to be able to print to.

Matching a Printer Type to a Defined Port

Once you've defined a port for each printer, you must tell Xprinter what type of printer is associated with each port. You list device types in the [devices] section of the .Xpdefaults file. Each entry in the [devices] section has the following format:

alias= PPD_file driver,port

Note that there must be a space between the PPD_file and driver and a comma between the driver and the port. The following list describes each part of this entry:

• alias: The alias is a descriptive name used to identify the printer. It can be anything you like. The alias is the name of the printer that appears in the printer setup dialog (for example, HP LaserJet III SI PostScript).

• PPD_file: The PPD_file is the name of the printer description (PPD) file used by the printer, without the .ppd extension. Look in the file xprinter/ppds/filename.map to identify the PPD file for your printer.

• driver: The driver is the type of driver the printer uses. The only valid value is PostScript.

• port: The port is the printer port as listed in the [ports] section of the .Xpdefaults file (ORION, SIRIUS, and LOCAL in the example [ports] section).

Printer Configuration Examples

This example demonstrates how to configure the following printers:

1. First, choose an alias for each printer. To make it easy to identify the printer you want to use from the Printer Setup dialog, you might use the following aliases for these printers:

   • HP LaserJet PS

   • NeWSprinter

   • QMS PS

     Note:

     If you use the Printer Setup dialog to associate ports and PPD files, you cannot specify a printer alias. You must choose an alias from the predefined list that appears in the Printer Devices list box in the Add Printer dialog. The corresponding PPD file is already associated with the printer aliases in this list box.

2. Next, identify the PPD file associated with each of these printers. In the xprinter/ppds/filename.map file, you can see that the PPD file for the printer on port ORION is hp3si523.ps, the PPD file for the printer on port LOCAL is q2200523.ps, and the PPD file for the printer on port SIRIUS is np20.ps.

   In this example, the [devices] section of the .Xpdefaults file would be as follows:

   [devices]
   HP LaserJet PS=HP3SI523 PostScript,ORION
   NeWSprinter=NP20 PostScript,SIRIUS
   QMS PS=Q2200523 PostScript,LOCAL
   

   Once you've added these entries to your .Xpdefaults file, the following printer choices are available from the printer setup dialog:

   HP LaserJet PS on ORION
   NeWSprinter on SIRIUS
   QMS PS on LOCAL
   

Specifying a Default Printer

Now that you've configured all available printers, you can make one of them the default printer. To make a specific printer the default printer on the printer setup dialog, add an entry of the following format to the [windows] section of the .Xpdefaults file:

[windows]
device= PPD_file, driver, port

You simply need to provide the same information that you used in the [devices] section. Only the format of the entry is different; there is a comma between the PPD_file and the driver instead of a space.

For example, suppose you want the default printer to be the printer at port ORION. Your [windows] section would look like the following:

[windows]
device=HP3SI523,PostScript,ORION 

The first three sections of your .Xpdefaults file looks like the following:

[windows]
device=HP3SI523,PostScript,ORION
[ports]
ORION=rsh bandit "lp -d ps"
SIRUS=rsh bandit "lp -d ps2"
LOCAL=lp -d ps
[devices]
HP LaserJet PS=HP3SI523 PostScript,ORION
NeWSprinter=NP20 PostScript,SIRIUS
QMS PS=Q2200523 PostScript,LOCAL

In your default .Xpdefaults file, the [windows] entry looks like the following:

[windows]
device=NULL,PostScript,FILE:

Since no PPD file is listed (NULL), the default on the printer setup dialog is to print generic PostScript to a file. You can specify the filename and change the type of output to PCL on the Printer Setup dialog.

Specifying Printer-Specific Options

For each printer defined in the devices section, you can include a section that lists the default printer-specific options for that printer. The options available vary between different printers, but typical options include number of copies, page size, paper tray, and orientation. The following is an example printer-specific section for default printer in the example .Xpdefaults file:

[HP3SI523,PostScript]
Scale=0.80
Copies=1
PaperTray=Lower
PageSize=Letter
Orientation=Portrait
DPI=300

Adding a Soft Font

Xprinter can access fonts from two sources: ROM-resident fonts and soft fonts. ROM-resident fonts are built into the printer. To access them, you do not need to add additional information for the printer. Instead, Xprinter determines whether or not a font is resident on a ROM by querying the PPD file for the specified printer.

You can extend the number of fonts available to you by adding soft fonts to your system. When you add a soft font, Xprinter detects it and downloads it as necessary when requested to do so by the application.

To add a soft font to your system, perform these steps in the following sequence:

1. Copy the PostScript Font-Binary (PFB) file from the TypeLibrary diskette to the xprinter/pssoftfonts directory. The TypeLibrary diskette is available from the font vendor.

2. Rename the PBF file to the face name of the font. Typically, TypeLibrary file names are abbreviated. For example, the filename for face name AGaramond-Bold is gdb_.pfb.

3. Copying the file to this directory makes the file available to Xprinter for downloading to a PostScript printer.

4. Copy the AFM (Adobe Font Metric) file for the font to the directory xprinter/fontmetrics/afm. Again, rename the file to the face name of the font with a .afm extension. Using the example of AGaramond-Bold, the AFM file should be copied to xprinter/fontmetrics/afm/agaramond-bold.afm.

5. Modify the xprinter/psstd.fonts file. This modification is necessary to cause Xprinter to create the X Window font name for the new font and provide the required mapping, as in the following example:

   AGaramond-Bold, -adobe-garamond-bold-normal--%d-%d-%d-%d-p-0-iso8859-1
   

   When Xprinter performs font operations, particularly querying the available fonts and loading fonts, it searches the PPD file for the available ROM fonts. Xprinter also searches the directory xprinter/pssoftfonts for the available soft fonts.

   An Oracle Outside In application should not need to consider whether the font originated in the printer ROM or if it is a downloadable soft font. Extending the fonts available to the Oracle Outside In application should be completely transparent to the application user.

This section provides information about library compatibility.

All libraries should be installed into a single directory and the directory should be included in the system's executable path ($PATH).

The libsc_vw.so module is the only library that must be linked with your application. It can be loaded when your application starts by linking it directly at compile time or it can be loaded dynamically by your application using library load functions (for example, dlopen).

The shared libraries are dependent on the presence of the X libraries Xm, Xt and X11 if vector graphics support is required. It is the application developer's responsibility to ensure that the needed functions from these libraries are present before the libraries are used.

The following is an example command line used to compile the sample application apitest from the /sdk/samplecode/unix directory. Please note that this command line is only an example. The actual command line required on the developer's system may vary. The example assumes that the include and library file search paths for the technology libraries and any required X libraries are set correctly. If they are not set correctly, the search paths for the include and/or library files must be explicitly specified via the -I<include file path> and/or -L<library file path> options, respectively, so that the compiler and linker can locate all required files.

gcc -w -o ../apitest/unix/apitest ../apitest/unix/apitest.c -I../../common -I/usr/X11R6/include -L../../demo -lsc_vw -lsc_fi -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXm -lXt -lX11 -Wl,-rpath,../../demo -Wl,-rpath,'${ORIGIN}'

cc -w -o ../apitest/unix/apitest ../apitest/unix/apitest.c -I/usr/include -I/usr/dt/share/include -I../../common -L../../demo -L/usr/lib -L/lib -lXm -lXt -lX11 -lsc_vw -lsc_fi -Wl,-R,'${ORIGIN}'

Note: When running the 32-bit SPARC binaries on Solaris 9 systems, you may see the following error:

ld.so.1: simple: fatal: libm.so.1: version `SUNW_1.1.1' not found
(required by file ./libsc_vw.so)

This is due to a missing system patch. Please apply one of the following patches (or its successor) to your system to correct.

• For Solaris 9: Patch 111722-04

cc -w -o ../apitest/unix/apitest ../apitest/unix/apitest.c -I/usr/include -I/usr/dt/share/include -I../../common -L../../demo -L/usr/lib -L/lib -lXm -lXt -lX11 -lsc_vw -lsc_fi -Wl,-R,'${ORIGIN}'