Spool Print Management - Printer Control, Use of TCP/IP BINLIB Option

Products

• OM Spool

Issue/Introduction

Explain the use of TCP/IP BINLIB option

Resolution

Spool TCP/IP printer support allows files to be printed on virtually all types of TCP/IP printers.

Most printers support PCL or PJL. This allows printer setup and control commands to be automatically sent to the printer by Spool when a file is printed.

Some printers do not support standard PCL or PJL commands and use their own printer control commands to control printer functions, such as page length, vertical spacing, and so on.

The Spool TCP/IP BINLIB option can be used to send customized binary printer commands in ASCII to the printer before the print file data is transmitted. These specialized commands can be used to set the required printer functions, such as page length, as needed by the file being printed. A binary ASCII command string is a sequence of hexadecimal characters that are already in the desired ASCII format and will not be translated from EBCDIC to ASCII at print time. See the example below for further clarification and an example.

To use the BINLIB option, do the following:

Add a BINLIB DD statement to the Spool startup JCL.

This dataset must specify a PDS library containing members with the name format of FORMxxxx, FCB2yyyy, or CHARzzzz
Where: xxxx = a FORM name
yyyy = a FCB name
zzzz = a CHAR name
Example: member name of FORMCA01

Add a "B" to the respective TCPDRIV= parameter on the printer node being used. The "B" option may be specified on TCP/IP drivers' types LPR, PCL5, PJL, PJL4, and PJL5.

Example: TCPDRIV=LPRB

The file to be printed must use a FORM, FCB, or CHAR specification. The FORM, FCB, or CHAR name will be used to locate the respective member name in the BINLIB dataset. The BINLIB member can then contain the binary printer commands in ASCII, which will automatically be included in front of the actual print data at print time.

Example: If a file uses a FORM name of "CA01", the member name FORMCA01 will be searched for in the BINLIB dataset, and if found, the respective ASCII printer commands in the member will be sent untranslated to the printer directly ahead of the print file. For example, the hexadecimal character string X'1B4309' is typically an Epson printer command to set the number of lines per page on a printer. The X'1B' is an ASCII escape character. The X'43' is an Epson command to set the printer lines per page. The X'09' specifies the actual number of lines per page to be set.