I am trying to gain some knowledge about how printing works on the VMS system. My dilemma is that I have a new multifunction printer here at the office that restricts color printing to only authorized individuals with a user code. If an unauthorized user tries to print the document is cancelled.
Well the accouting / inventory software I have that runs on VMS is sending its documents to the printer as color documents so they are not printing.
The support people for the software tell me they are using HP emulation drivers to print. When I ask them to use a black and white driver they conviently state that they do not use a printer driver and they can quote me a price to fix their problem.
My questions are: Is there a black and white HP emulation driver that can be used, or is the printing system completely different?
and
Can I just set up the printer definition to send a user code along with the print file to the printer?
The print files may have PCL codes at the start to control this. Can you post a dump of a report file as it is produced on the vms system? There are various methods to include headers in print jobs. The printer model would also help. Phil
The support people are probably correct in that their software doesn't have a formal 'printer driver' other than a library they call that knows how to produce PCL or Postscript for a particular HP printer.
You need to find out from the printer maker how color is authorized. If it is a code embedded in the print job, you may be able to use a setup file in the print queue. OTOH, it may be a back channel to the client (using a secure prototocl) rather than something embedded within the file, which a normal printer queue wouldn't be able to provide.
Dell is trying to sell us a color printer similar capability, but they are unable to provide any technical details of how their Colortrak driver works.
