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Full Discussion: Insert FF (feed form) in text file so that when printing the printer print on a new page accordingly
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Insert FF (feed form) in text file so that when printing the printer print on a new page accordingly Post 303028682 by bakunin on Saturday 12th of January 2019 02:38:35 PM
Old 01-12-2019
Notice that such a function is usually located in the printers (or, more precisely, the printer queues) backend and you are - by trying to do what you do - second-guessing the work of it. Chances are this might get filtered out in the processing the printer driver does after you send it to the queue.

Some historical background on where that mattered: you probably know that the line-feed sequence in UNIX is a "linefeed" character, whereas in DOS/Windoze it is a carriage-return plus a linefeed. The reason is: (dot-matrix) printers worked this way, the carriage-return moved the printing head back to the left side and the linefeed move the paper upwards. It was quite like the mechanical and electrical typewriters that preceeded printers. By having this sequence as a end-of-line sequence the makers of DOS could forego the necessity to write a printer driver for their OS. UNIX, on the other hand, had printer drivers and therefore didn't need a two-character sequence. Therefore it had (and has, up to this day) a one-character EOL sequence which is in turn changed to a CR+LF if you print something to one of these old dot-matrix printers with endless paper.

Now, consider what that would do to your print job if you would mess around with the EOL sequence yourself: most probably not what you wanted to have because between your artificially inserted characters and them being processed (and turned into something maybe completely different) by the driver the printer might get confused over the result.

My suggestion is: use a "high-level" document language (i.e. Postscript, TeX, PDF, ....) to create your report. You can easily force form-feeds (or, repectively, their equivalent) within these languages because the all have that. Then use a driver for the respective language (in fact there are even natively-capable Postscript printers) to process your generated file into a correct print job. This way you are save from unknown (and unwanted) side effects and furthermore you are not bound to a specific printer model. All the mentioned languages are quasi-standards and you can easily swap one i.e. Postscript-capable printer for another Postscript-capable printer and the printed result will guaranteed to look the same.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
This User Gave Thanks to bakunin For This Post:
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LEARN ABOUT MOJAVE

disable

enable(1)                                                          User Commands                                                         enable(1)

NAME

       enable, disable - enable/disable LP printers

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/bin/enable printer...

       /usr/bin/disable [-c | -W]  [ -r [reason]] printer...

DESCRIPTION

       The  enable  command  activates  printers,  enabling  them to print requests submitted by the lp command. enable must be run on the printer
       server.

       The disable command deactivates printers, disabling them from printing requests submitted by the lp command. By default, any requests  that
       are  currently  printing  on printer will be reprinted in their entirety either on printer or another member of the same class of printers.
       The disable command must be run on the print server.

       Use lpstat -p to check the status of printers.

       enable and disable only effect queueing on the print server's spooling system. Executing these commands from a client system will  have  no
       effect on the server.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported for use with disable:

       -c              Cancels  any requests that are currently printing on printer. This option cannot be used with the -W option. If the printer
                       is remote, the -c option will be silently ignored.

       -W              Waits until the request currently being printed is finished before disabling printer. This option cannot be used  with  the
                       -c option. If the printer is remote, the -W option will be silently ignored.

       -r [reason]     Assigns  a  reason  for  the  disabling  of  the  printer(s). This reason applies to all printers specified. This reason is
                       reported by lpstat -p. Enclose reason in quotes if it contains blanks. The default  reason  is  "unknown  reason"  for  the
                       existing printer, and "new printer" for a printer added to the system but not yet enabled.

OPERANDS

       The following operand is supported for both enable and disable:

       printer         The  name of the printer to be enabled or disabled. Specify printer using atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information
                       regarding the naming conventions for atomic names.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned:

       0               Successful completion.

       non-zero        An error occurred.

FILES

       /var/spool/lp/*         LP print queue.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWpcu                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |CSI                          |enabled                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       lp(1), lpstat(1), printers.conf(4), attributes(5)

SunOS 5.10                                                          9 Sep 1996                                                           enable(1)
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