Impressario lets you:
obtain up-to-the-minute status of a printer or its print jobs either by viewing the printer's icon, or by double-clicking the printer's icon; see “Understanding the Different Printer Icons”.
easily customize printing for text, PostScript®, or Image files by dragging the file onto the PrintPanel icon and using the advanced, printer-specific Options window; see “Printing Files with Customized Printer Settings”.
save printer settings so that all application programs with print commands use the settings; see “Saving Printer-Specific Options”.
print almost any kind of file on any printer, even when the printer does not have a built-in PostScript interpreter.
For general information on submitting print jobs, checking the printer's queue, or troubleshooting printing, see Chapter 5, “Printing,” in IRIS Essentials. To set up system software to access an Impressario printer, see “Setting Up an Impressario Printer”.
An icon for each available printer (both generic and Impressario), appears in the Printer Manager window. Once you drag a printer icon onto your desktop, you can submit jobs to the printer by dragging files onto the icon, and can check the printer's queue by double clicking the icon.
Impressario printer icons look different from generic printer icons (see “Icons for Impressario and Generic Printers”), and offer these extra advantages:
The icons change in appearance to indicate when your job reaches the printer, when your job is finished printing, and when the printer has a problem that keeps your job from printing; see “Icons that Show the Printer's Status”.
The icons look different depending on what type of printer they represent; for example, the icon for a color raster printer looks different from that of a monochrome PostScript printer; see “Icons for Different Types of Impressario Printers”.
Impressario printers have tall, boxy icons; generic printers have shorter icons with knobs; see Figure 2-1.
 | Note: If your printer is supported by Impressario (see “Supported Printers and Scanners”) but the wrong icon appears in the Printer Manager, see “Setting Up an Impressario Printer” to reinstall the printer. |
The piece of paper exiting the top slot of the printer icon describes the printer's type: black and white PostScript, color PostScript, black and white raster, and color raster.
Figure 2-2 shows the icons for black and white PostScript printers and color raster printers; their counterparts are identical, except the piece of paper exiting the printer is in color for a color PostScript printer, and is in black and white for a black and white raster printer.
Only Impressario icons change to show a change in the status of the printer, as shown in Figure 2-3 and described here.
An idle Impressario printer icon shows that the printer is not currently printing a job.
A busy Impressario printer icon shows that the printer is currently printing a job.
A broken Impressario printer icon shows that the printer is unable to print at this time. For example, it may be out of paper, have a paper jam, or be turned off.
For more information on the printer's status, double-click the printer's icon to see the PrintStatus window.
You can use PrintPanel's Options window to customize printing for the types of files shown in Figure 2-4 and described here:
| PostScript | You typically create PostScript files through applications that create line drawings or text files, for example, a desktop publishing or illustration application. | |
| Image | You can create Image files by taking a screen snapshot, scanning in an image using gscan, or using other applications, such as a paint program. (For information on using gscan, see Chapter 3, “Scanning with Impressario.”) | |
| Plain text | You can create plain text files by using text editors such as vi or jot, or by saving an electronic mail message in a file. |
Any changes you make to the settings apply only to your own print jobs. For example, if user joe changes any settings, the changes apply only to his print job; user bob's print jobs use his own custom settings or the default settings. You can also save any changes you make so they'll apply to all subsequent print jobs sent to the same printer; see “Saving Printer-Specific Options”.
The Administrator can specify default printer settings for all users, but individual users can override them for their own print jobs; see “Setting Default Printer Options for the System”.
| Note: An Options window is available for printers listed in “Supported Printers and Scanners,” and for third-party printers that include Impressario-compliant printer drivers. If no Options window is available, the More Options item in the Printer menu and the More Options button is grayed out. |
To change printer-specific settings and print a file with the new settings, follow these steps:
Drag the file onto the PrintPanel icon; or start PrintPanel by double-clicking the launch icon, then typing a file name in the Files to print field.
If the PrintPanel icon is not on your desktop, choose “An Icon” from the Find toolchest, type PrintPanel in the Find an Icon window, then drag the icon that appears in the drop pocket out onto your desktop.
Select a printer from the Available printers list in the PrintPanel window, then click the More Options button.
You see an Options window similar to the one shown in Figure 2-5. Note that there is a scroll bar on the right side of the display area that you must slide down to reveal all options.
Change the settings.
See “Changing Printer Settings for All File Types,” “Changing Printer Settings for PostScript Files,” “Changing Printer Settings for Image Files,” and “Changing Printer Settings for Plain Text Files” in this chapter.
Confirm or cancel the new settings.
To confirm that the settings are correct and to make the Options window disappear, click OK.
To confirm that the settings are correct and to keep the Options window displayed, click Apply.
To cancel the new settings and to make the Options window disappear, click Cancel.
To save these settings so they become your default settings for the printer that is selected, and to save the settings in the PrintPanel window so they are the default settings for all printers, click Save in the PrintPanel window. See also “Saving Printer-Specific Options”.
Note that the Printer Specific Options field in the PrintPanel window contains command line arguments that represent the settings that you changed in the Options window.
Note: The Administrator can specify default printer settings for all users, but individual users can override them for their own print jobs; see “Setting Default Printer Options for the System”. To print the file using the new settings, click Print in the PrintPanel window. PrintPanel sends the job to the printer, and displays a notifier that shows the job's ID number. When you click Exit in the notifier, the notifier and the PrintPanel window disappear.
General printing settings apply to all three file formats that Impressario supports. They often include:
| Paper Size | Specify the size of paper in the printer's paper tray by clicking the box next to A ( 8.5x11-inch), A4 (European A-size) or Legal (8.5x14-inch). | |
| Printer Resolution |
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| Print Banner Page |
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| Verbose Logging |
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Depending on the printer's type and model, more general options may be available; for example, you may be able to specify whether to print in color or in black and white.
PostScript printing options apply only to PostScript files that conform to the Adobe structuring conventions; they do not apply to Image files or to plain text files (see “Changing Printer Settings for Plain Text Files” for information on processing plain text files as if they were PostScript).
PostScript printing options include:
| Page Ordering | Normal prints so page one is the first page of the job; Reversed makes page one the last page. Click the box next to the option that you prefer. | |
| Page Range | Lets you print all pages or a subset of pages and, within the range you select, lets you print only even or only odd pages. |
The options for printing Image files let you control the orientation, lightness, and size of the printed image. These options apply only to image files; they do not apply to PostScript or plain text files.
To change the orientation of the image on the page, change one or more of these settings:
| Mirror Image | Click this box to flip the image horizontally. | |
| Rotate | Click the box next to Best Fit to automatically rotate and scale the image so that it is printed as large as possible on the page. |
To change the lightness of the image, either slide the bar next to Gamma, or type a value in the field that's next to the Gamma bar. The lower the Gamma value, the lighter the image.
To change the size of the image, change one or more of these Scaling settings:
| None | Click this box to make the image on the page contain the same number of dots as the image on the screen. This makes the image on the page appear smaller than the image on the screen, since most printers print smaller dots (that is, print with higher resolution) than the screen can display. If the image is larger than the page, only the portion of the image that fits on the page will be printed. | |
| Match Input Resolution |
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| Page Fill | Specify what percentage of the printed page your image should occupy. Impressario scales and centers the image to fit. |
The Options window lets you change a plain plain text file into a formatted PostScript file. Click the Yes box next to Format Text and several options become available.
| Note: Only the settings that you change under Text File Options in the Options window will affect plain text files. The PostScript File Options that appear earlier in the window (Page Ordering and Page Range) affect only those files whose original format is PostScript. |
To print headers on each page, click the box next to Yes.
To change the layout of the text on the page, change these settings:
| Orientation | Click Portrait to orient your text vertically (the way the text of standard documents is oriented); click Landscape to orient it horizontally. | |
| Columns Per Page |
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To change the font style and size, change these settings:
| Font | Click any font that appears in the scrolling list (the fonts listed are those installed on the printer host). | |
| Size | Click any font size. |
The Save button in the PrintPanel window saves two groups of settings:
the settings in the PrintPanel window, which apply to all printers shown in the list of available printers; this information is saved in the .glprc file in your home directory.
the settings that you change in the Options window for the selected printer (the printer whose name is highlighted in the Available printers list); these settings are saved in a file named /var/spool/lp/settings/<printername>/<username>.
When you save these settings, they apply only to jobs that you submit to the printer; they do not apply to jobs that other users submit. The Administrator can change system default settings for a printer, but any user can override these settings for their own jobs; see “Setting Default Printer Options for the System”.
To save printer-specific settings, follow these steps:
When the settings in the Options window are correct, click the OK or Apply button.
In the PrintPanel window, click the Save button.
You see the Save Settings window, which shows a list of all printers whose settings you have changed during this session with PrintPanel.
In the Save Settings window, select the printer(s) whose settings you want to save, then click the Save button.
Note: If you are the Administrator, you see two buttons for saving: Save-Personal saves the settings only for you; Save-All Users saves the settings for all users. The settings that apply to all printers and the printer-specific options are now saved and will be in effect the next time you print a job from the desktop or from an application program.
Now you can either print the file that is specified in the Files to print field by clicking the Print button, or you can dismiss the PrintPanel window by choosing “Quit” from the File menu.