Printers

Question 3.1   What printers are available, and which should I use?

There are small printers on every floor, named after the room that they are in. These should be used for small, quick jobs. Documents longer than a few pages should be sent to one of the heavy-duty printers, which can print on both sides of the page. You will have a default printer defined when your account is setup. This will usually be one of small printers. Please pick up the pages from these printers quickly.

Question 3.2   How can I tell which is my default printer?

Just type ``echo $PRINTER'' and hit return.

Question 3.3   How can I change my default printer?

Type setprinter printer-name and hit return.

Question 3.4   How can I print to a different printer?

You need to tell the application you are using which printer you wish to use. Each printer has a name, and multi-function printers have names for each function. For example, the heavy duty printer in room 438 is called mx and for double-sided 8.5 by 11 paper it is mxd. For most applications your just add the printer name, prefixed by -P to the command. Assuming you want mxd, the following examples will do it.

For Netscape, acroread (for .pdf files), and others where pressing the print button gives a window with the print command lpr just add -Pmxd, so the window shows lpr -Pmxd.

For printing dvi files created by TEXor L^ATEX, dvips -Pmxd filename.

There are several methods for printing text files, the best is enscript -G -Pmxd filename which gives nice headers. If you don't want the headers, leave out the -G.