Formfeeds Ignored On Printer

[Radnour Acton-Page_1]

We have two continuous form printers, hanging off Hp Jet Directs. When I print from Unix, formfeeds are ignored. I have stopped the queues to see whether the formfeeds are in the files being printed (they are) but when they are printed the printer does not feed and outputs are one after another with no gaps. Any suggestions ?

[Steve Steel]

Hi


What type of printers and which model script.


You may need to get this printer to formfeed by using the following options:
lp -dname -ol66 -otl60 file

-ol = pagelen 66
-otl60 = textlen 60

Vary as required


Steve Steel

[K.Vijayaragavan.]

What is the type of file you are printing and what command you are using to take print?

-Vijay

[Radnour Acton-Page_1]

Hi Steve

The two printers are a Tally 2240 and an Epson DFX-8500.

I am using the dumbcr model.

[S.K. Chan]

If you're using a "dumb" printer script model, somewhere in the script it should look like this ..

......
i=1
while [ $i -le $copies ]
do
for file in $files
do
cat "$file" 2>&1
echo "\014\c"
done
i=`expr $i + 1`
done

check if the echo "\014\c" exist.

[Radnour Acton-Page_1]

I tried the
# lp -dname -ol66 -otl60 file

but one file butted against the other halfway down the page.

Looked at the script and there is \014\c

I should say we use this script with some lasers and they ff okay.

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

Check printers configuration.

Check FF must be followed by CR (FF+CR) or FF+NL.

Just an idea.

[K.Vijayaragavan.]

Problem must be because of two form feeds (FF) / CR (one by the printer it self and another by the script or the file state).

Skip any of the one and see what happens.

K.Vijay

[Steve Steel]

Hi


This all looks good but remember

Very important: JetDirect scripts in the interface directory are generic and only handle the LAN process. The 'real' script is located under the interface directory in the model.orig directory. This is the script that controls the printing behavior of the print job.

Make a script containing a line and a formfeed
by adding cntrl L which will get translated as form feed when put to the printer interface

Print it twice and see what happens.

Please post the printer scripts from
/etc/lp/interface
/etc/lp/interface/model.orig

Steve Steel

[Radnour Acton-Page_1]

Here's the Interface

[Radnour Acton-Page_1]

And this is the other