VMS Printing Forms and Setup Modules

Quick Reference Jumptable

• Queues
  • starting
  • stopping
  • creating a new
  • changing setup libraries of
  • printing to a specific
  • showing characteristics of
• Print Forms
  • showing characteristics of
  • creating a new
  • printing using non-default
  • modifying
• Setup Libraries
  • location of
  • adding modules to
  • modifying modules in
  • listing modules in

Overview

The heart of VMS printing is the print queue. Users place their print jobs on a queue, which feeds them to a printer one at a time. Each terminal queue sends jobs to one printer. The queues use a shared set of print forms which contain information on how to print the document, such as margins, width, space between page breaks, and what kind of paper is required (so, in theory, VMS can tell the operator to load custom paper when a user asks for it).

Usually, the default mounted form will be something nice, like 1PI (letter-size paper, long side up, 80 columns across, 66 lines per page). You can print using a different form, if necessary: to print the document FOO.TXT on the queue CRPRT using the form 1PX (Landscape 66X158), the user types

To see the characteristics of the form 1PX, type

The VAX responds with

Note that these forms only tell VMS how to send text to the printer (put line feeds every 158 chars and form feeds every 66 lines), and don't actually send the control codes to the printer. To do this, VMS has text library files containing "setup modules" which are documents containing printer codes in the printer's native language (PCL-5 for Hewlett-Packard printers, PostScript for Laserwriters, etc.) which tell the printer how to behave for each print job. The definition of each form contains information on what setup module to use: in the previous example, this is the statement /SETUP=(LJ1PX).

These setup modules are kept in text libraries in the SYS$LIBRARY directory. When initializing a print queue, the system manager tells the VAX which setup library it should use for that printer. You can see what library a queue is using by typing

For example,

The /LIBRARY statement says that this queue is getting its setup modules from the library LJDEVCTL2.TLB (Note that you must omit the .TLB extender when assigning libraries to queues! Otherwise...)

Notice that the library that the modules come from is defined by the queue, but the setup module is determined only by the form used. This enables the same form to be used on different printers. Suppose you have two queues named Apple and Orange. Apple uses the text library APPLE.TLB, orange uses ORANGE.TLB. Suppose you want to produce strawberry tarts out of both printers, but the two printers speak totally different languages. You can create a 2 different modules called TART_MODULE and put one in each library: the one in ORANGE.TLB tells how to make a tart on the Orange printer, the one in APPLE.TLB is specific to Apple printers. Then define a form (TART) which uses the setup module TART_MODULE. Since the library where the module resides is specified by the queue, not the form, if you print using the TART form on both queues, each printer will get the setup module specific to it. Forms at Carleton are designed this way: the user never needs to worry about what sort of printer he/she is using: the form 1PI looks the same from every queue. Or at least, it's supposed to.

Applications

How to define a new form for a new type of document: