Is there any tool or add-on available, which provides support, to send a report to a list of printers. There should be a possibility to save and maintain different lists, and activate one of them on demand.

Thanks in advance
spartacus

Hallo Spartacus,

Do you mean something like logical printers? However that will print only to one of the printers that's defined, you want multiple copies if I am correct?

M.fr.Gr.
Han

Hi Han,

thanks for your support.
Yes it should be multiple printers. So that you can send a report to different printers with one click.
Somebody told me, he had seen something like that, but he don't know, if it was a cust or a add-on.


regards
spartacus

Hallo Spartacus,

On a unix system you can simply modify the printer interface scripts to do this. Of course your printers should use the same printer driver or it would make things a bit more complex.

On AIX it's also a bit more complex but sending the output to a script instead of to a printer you can solve this as well.

Of course this means you have to do a little shell programming, you can't define it from Baan but's all standard software.

I don't have a clue how to do this on NT I have to ask around if there's something available for this problem.

Rgrds,
Han

Hi Han,

thanks for the hint with the printer script. Maybe that can help. Do you have any example how such a script can like?
With printerinterface you mean this files in "printinf/h" for example? Didn't you?

Btw.: I'm lucky, we are talking about a unix system.

greetings
spartacus

No, that's not what I meant. The printinf/h files in $BSE/lib are printer drivers from Baan.

The files I meant are normally located in /var/spool/lp/interfaces or something like that. They have the name of the printer.

Sorry but I can't look up the name of the interface since I am working on a NT platform right now but tomorrow I will work in the office and can look them up for you if you let me know on what kind of Unix flavour you work.

Besides I guess that Patrick can help you out on this as well.

Mit freundliche Gruesse,
Han

Hi Han,

I tried this path, but I can follow it only until "/var/spool". Here I find some "lpd<x>" directories with "lock"-files in it. I don't can contiue with ".../lp/..."

greetings
spartacus

StreamServe and Optio are 3rd party add on's that do this type of work. They are pretty expensive, but do so many other things too, like email and faxing. Formatting can be different for each output. HTML, XML support, etc.

Don't know if that is the route you were thinking, or something more home made. Surely there can be a customization made to support multiple printers, using a conversion program I would think, if that's all you need to do.

Hi Spartacus,

What if, if you send the report to a list of E-Mail id's, instead of printers? I have worked with B2Email product from Nazdaq, Israel, which does this and it is very economical. May be, you can check with them (www.nazdaq.co.il), if they have anything that suits your needs.

Ram.

Hi spartacus,

below a simple example to print BAAN reports to various printers.

Maintain Device Data (ttaad3100m000):
Device : EDVTEST
Description : Test printer to send Reports to various printers
Device Type : Direct
Locale : ISO-8859-1 Western Europe - 8 bit
Printer
Driver : hp_lj4
Device Queue : /tlf/script/clptest %d %s
Paper Type : A4 A4 format Portrait
Left Margin : 0 Form Feed : No
File
Driver :
Shell Command :
4GL Program :
Argument :
Path :
Change allowed :
Page Length : 0


Script clptest:
#
# @(#) clptest - Example to print BAAN reports to various printers
#
# Parameter given from BAAN:
# $1 - Number of copies
# $2 - Filename ($BSE/tmp/tmp.......)
#
#
TMPFILE=/tmp/lptmp
cat $2 >$TMPFILE
#
#List of printers
lp -d edv01 -n $1 $TMPFILE
#
lp -d edv02 -n $1 $TMPFILE
#
lp -d edv03 -n $1 $TMPFILE
#


This is only a simple example thats works on our Unixware system. Maybe you have to adjust the script for your environment.

Disadvantage:Your printers must use the same driver.

Juergen