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The rlpr commands send print jobs directly to a variety of network printers without going through a local lpd. Local printing services are entirely bypassed, so users can send data to new printers and print servers without help from a sysadmin. The rlpr home page is truffula.com/rlpr. The software works on most UNIX platforms.

ghostscript

ghostscript is a freely distributed PostScript interpreter that enables you to view PostScript files on your screen. If you need to drive some sort of raster output device and you don’t want to spend the money for a commercial driver, use ghostscript as a starting point for building your own driver. Be forewarned that building a driver is a very complicated process. Several different versions of ghostscript are available; see www.ghostscript.com for information about the differences among them.

mpage

mpage is a text-to-PostScript converter that places multiple logical pages on a single physical page. This trick is a great tree saver when you are printing things like source code for which you don’t need big type and large margins.

enscript

Adobe originally developed a product called enscript to convert text files to PostScript for printing. This software, or something like it, makes text output look nice on PostScript printers. enscript provides page formatting features such as fancy page headers and “two up” printing (two pages printed at half-size on one sheet).

Although the Adobe version of this program is no longer maintained, a good alternative exists. GNU enscript is a free, open source version of enscript that is completely backward compatible with Adobe’s version. GNU enscript offers a wealth of new features including language-sensitive highlighting, support for various paper sizes, PostScript font downloading, and user-defined headers.

You can download the GNU enscript from the web at people.ssh.fi/mtr/genscript. Since most of the work on this project is done in Finland by Markku Rossi, the default paper type is A4. A4 paper is slightly longer than letter, just enough to cut off vital slivers of your documents such as headers, footers, or page numbers. To Americanize GNU enscript, run the configure command with the following argument when you are first installing it:

# ./configure --with-media=Letter

The paper type can also be set on the enscript command line. If you forget to change the media type and use enscript to print to a high-end printer that knows what kinds of paper it has loaded, the printer may refuse to print at all.

23.9 PRINTER PHILOSOPHY

The main things to expect when dealing with printers are troubles and frustrations. If all else fails, just be glad it’s not MS-DOS.

Use printer accounting

You should enable printer accounting even if you don’t plan to charge for printer use. The overhead is very slight and you get to see exactly who is using the printer. Printer accounting also gives good information about the various sources of print jobs, which is good information to know when you are locating new printers.

Use banner pages only when necessary

The printing system can preface each job with a page showing the title of the job and the user who submitted it. This banner page can be helpful on printers used by many different people, but it’s a waste of time and paper in most office situations. If you don’t need banner pages, suppress them by setting the Boolean printcap variable sh on BSD systems, or just don’t have your interface script generate them on SysV.

Provide recycling bins

All kinds of computer paper are recyclable. You can use the boxes that paper comes in as recycling bins. Post a sign asking that no foreign material (such as staples, paper clips, and newspaper) be discarded there.

Provide previewers

Users will often print a document, find a small error in the formatting, and end up reprinting the whole job. This waste of paper can easily be avoided with software that