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Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

 
Joseph Bianco
Occasional Advisor

How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

Where can I find a procedure for printing a jpg picture to a PCL printer?  There was a solution on the ITRC forum, but now you cannot access that information.

 

Joseph

6 REPLIES 6
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

 
Dennis Handly
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

>There was a solution on the ITRC forum, but now you cannot access that information.

 

How did you search for it?  google, a forum search or an old bookmark?

If using google, just add "site:h30499.www3.hp.com".

Volker Halle
Honored Contributor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

Joseph,

 

all old ITRC articles should have been imported into this new 'community'. The problem is, that the old links from Google still point to the pages on the old ITRC forum, which are no longer valid. So you can use the 'trick' desribed by Dennis or SEARCH in this new community like this:

 

FIRST change 'Board' to 'Category' and then enter 'jpg print' into the Search for... box at the top of the screen. This will allow you find find all articles in the OpenVMS forums (searching in Board means just searching in this 'General' subforum).

 

One of the articles found is this. Does this help ?

 

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/System-Management/printing-of-image-files-like-gif-in-ovms-alpha/m-p/3486778#M5659

 

Volker.

HakZan
Visitor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

Maybe you have found a solution..........

 

If you have windowsserver in your environment with a queue to the same printer, relay the job through the windows-

server using LPD. Is it a requirement to print JPG directly from VMS to the PCL-printer ??

 

regards,

 

Hakan Zanderau

HakZan
Visitor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

I was a little bit to fast to answer........

Most of the time, when VMS has no driver for the filetype..........the easiest way is to relay the printjob through

a windowsserver. I wrote the previous reply without any testing. I have tested and need to do some more testings

because it didn't succeed.

 

/Hakan

Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: How to print a jpg picture file from OpenVMS

VMS can print images just fine, or not at all.

 

The older DEC Image stuff had VMS printing all sorts of images, and there are tools around to print bar codes, for instance.

 

The keys here are the document composition software and the printing software.  First whether you're printing ASCII or some other subset of ISO Latin-1, or if you're printing something more complex.  That's the document.  What OpenVMS can generate for documents must then be matched up with what the printer can accept and print.   Some printers depend on the host for rendering.  Some can print Postscript or PDF documents.    Or the document needs to be converted, as DEC Print Services (DCPS) provides.

 

There are few applications on VMS that can provide Postscript or PDF or other aggregated documents, and very few can provide HP PCL. (This ignoring that PCL has been a moving target recently, and the newest instantiation wasn't documented when I went looking.)  DEC Print Services (DCPS) can perform basic conversions to Postscript, and Ghostscript can shuffle some formats.

 

Depending on the features of the particular printer, the OpenVMS user can need to convert the JPG into a PCL document.  The rest is handled by the queuing system and the printer.  (HP has some printers that depend on the host for all rendering, and that's not something HP supports with VMS.)

 

The other common option is to dump the VMS files somewhere else (Mac, Linux, Windows) and let the software on that platform process the jobs.  Something like the symbiont execution package (execsymb) can provide some of the necessary pieces of this whole multi-platform printing puzzle that happen to run on VMS.

 

Add to this that printers can expect IPP connections, and you'll find a need for a Process Software IP stack, or some work on VMS, or a relay; TCP/IP Services lacks IPP support.

 

So... in fewer words...  Yes, this is possible.  No, not by default.  No, not (in isolation) with an LPR or telnet queue relay or IPP (if you have that).   And somebody will have to look at the particulars of the document format, of the features supported by the particular printer(s), and at whether a relay and document reprocessing through a more capable host is an option.  And likely set up that intermediate host, or port some conversion software to VMS, or work out a tool chain for conversion using (possibly) Ghostscript on VMS.