ALAN@FANDM.BITNET.UUCP (04/03/87)
I have yet another question for the group. Now that we are
connected into the network and have access to the outside world, I find
that I actually get some mail that is useful to me. This reminded me of
yet another silly little problem that has been sitting in my pile of
things to do when I get some free time - meaning never.
When you do a PRINT in VMS mail, it sends the current message
you are looking at out to the printer. What it doen't do is put a flag
page on the front of it, even if the print queue is set up for
DEFAULT=FLAG. Is there anyway to fix it so that I get a flag page?
Half page mail messages without a flag page have a tendancy to get left
with printout that printed before it on that printer and then get sent
to the wrong office.
An associated question is this. We have a bunch of dot matrix
printers spread around the campus in rooms where there are clusters of
terminals. I have set SYLOGIN.COM so that it figures out where the
nearest of those printers is to the terminal a person is logging into
and then redifines PRINT to send output to that print queue. The
problem is that MAIL doesn't seem to honor this symbol definition, which
isn't too suprising. What does MAIL use to initiate the print, and is
there any good way to get a hook in there to do a redirection to some
queue other than SYS$PRINT?
Alan Sutter (ALAN@FANDM.BITNET)
Franklin and Marshall College
Lancaster, PA 17604
(717) 291-4005carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU.UUCP (04/04/87)
> When you do a PRINT in VMS mail, it sends the current message > you are looking at out to the printer. What it doen't do is put a flag > page on the front of it, even if the print queue is set up for > DEFAULT=FLAG. Is there anyway to fix it so that I get a flag page? > Half page mail messages without a flag page have a tendancy to get left > with printout that printed before it on that printer and then get sent > to the wrong office. Do you also have the queue set /SEP=FLAG? > An associated question is this. We have a bunch of dot matrix > printers spread around the campus in rooms where there are clusters of > terminals. I have set SYLOGIN.COM so that it figures out where the > nearest of those printers is to the terminal a person is logging into > and then redifines PRINT to send output to that print queue. The > problem is that MAIL doesn't seem to honor this symbol definition, which > isn't too suprising. What does MAIL use to initiate the print, and is > there any good way to get a hook in there to do a redirection to some > queue other than SYS$PRINT? I haven't checked this, but mail almost certainly uses the technique of setting "spool on close" bit in the file processing options of the RMS file attributes block of the temporary file it creates to hold the messages to be printed. If this is the case, there is no way that I know of to get the file to go anywhere other than SYS$PRINT. However, don't give up hope: ask yourself "Where IS SYS$PRINT, anyway?" Well, you've got a queue defined with that name, so that's where it is by default; however, what if instead of redefining PRINT in SYLOGIN.COM to be PRINT/QUEUE=nearest_printer, you issued a command of the form "DEFINE/JOB SYS$PRINT nearest_printer_queue"? The answer is, PRINT without an explicit queue specification will go to SYS$PRINT, which is now the nearest printer, and any file spooled for printing by the mechanism described above will go there as well.