FAQ

There are two options here.

If the print file has printer-specific escape sequences in the file, Print Wizard will pass this directly to the printer without trying to format or auto-fit any portion of the print job. So you need do nothing in this case.

If the print file contains control sequences and tag printing that Print Wizard does not see as printer-specific codes, you can still print direct to the printer by including the command-line switch to print to the spooler or to print raw:

/vlevel=spooler       or       /vlevel=raw

Yes, Print Wizard version 3.0 or later supports printing a PCL file directly. The question may be one of what level of PCL is the file in and whether your printer supports PCL. If you are printing to a non-PCL printer, and the PCL codes are for version PCL 5 or earlier, you can turn on "translatepcl" with a command-line switch (or via a "print profile") and Print Wizard will translate this to your specific printer. If you are printing to a PCL printer, and the file contains PCL 5 or earlier, you can either print this direct or with the "translatepcl" command-line switch. If you are printing a PCL 6 or later file, you need to print this to a PCL 6 or later printer driver as it will not work with a PCL 5 or earlier driver, not can Print Wizard handle the translation to a normal printer driver. This means that you cannot print PCL 6 on a non-PCL printer currently.

Print Wizard supports several graphics file formats, including the option to print them at true size or at full page, stretching as needed. The possible formats are TIFF, JPG, GIF, WMF or BMP.

In the terminal emulation world, such as what is supported with our Anzio products (serial, telnet or SSH), remote printing was most often done by passthrough printing, where the print job would "pass through" the terminal session to the locally attached printer. Host applications often supported this as well as the terminal client.

Other types of printing were also supported by the host application and the host itself, namely printing to a spool or queue on the host for the local printer. The UNIX could also be set to print through the LPR or LP program which could then be redirected to remote printers or remote print servers.

Print Wizard supports three types of printing that works with these approaches, Despool, LPD and Listen.

• Listen watches for remote print jobs coming in as raw data on port 9100, similar to Hewlett-Packard's ® JetDirect protocol.
• LPD utilizes the LPR / LPD protocol for capturing print jobs destined for a remote print server.
• Despool, and the FTPDespool variation, watches for remote jobs posted to a specific location. While Despool watches a locally mounted directory, such as over SMB or NFS, FTPDespool can watch a remote directory over the FTP protocol.

It is possible to script all uses of the Print Wizard engine such that the user does not know what is happening.

• From your own application or user script, you could set up Print Wizard to run multiple times against the same file, simply by preserving the file between runs.
• You could set a script up that runs Print Wizard once to format a file to a specific type, such as creating a PCL file, then use Print Wizard to reprint it, fax it, email it, etc.
• From the PWLPD or PWListen program, you could run a script upon receiving the file that would manipulate the file and output it to numerous sources (set up a Custom Program for output).
• From a Print Wizard print profile, you can define a "By Custom" profile that actually ran a script that runs the Print Wizard engine several times instead of once for the file specified.

There are lots of options here. Call if you have a specific need.

The simplest way is to lay out your print document and print to a PCL 5 or earlier printer driver. When you do this, go into the printer driver and select "Print to file". It should ask you for a file name that can then be saved off for future use.

Even if you do not have a PCL printer, you can install a PCL printer driver to generate print files from. Do an "Add printer" and select an H/P printer that supports the level of PCL you want. Then set the "Print to file" flag and use it to print through. The PCL file can then be used for subsequent printing, for overlays or for other reasons.

This is not as easy as creating a PCL file. A SPL file is created when a print job spools out what is called EMF files to the printer spooler.

First locate the spool directory, usually "\windows\system32\spool\printers". Under Windows NT, it may instead be "\winnt\system32\spool\printers" or "\winnt\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers". On some versions you can configure Windows to use a different directory for all printers, or for a specific printer.

To find your PC's general spool directory:

• Go to the Control Panel
• Click on "Printers" or "Printers and Faxes"
• In the File menu, click on "Server Properties"
• Click on "Advanced"
• Note what is in "Spool folder".

If in the steps below you fail to find a particular spool file, you may want to check the Windows Registry, under one of the following areas:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\DefaultSpoolDirectory
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\specific printer name\SpoolDirectory

Now capture the SPL file.

• Open the Control Panel's "Printers" or "Printers and Faxes" applet.
• Double-click the icon for the printer in question. Ideally, there will be no print jobs showing.
• From the Printer menu, choose "Pause printing".
• Print the document you want to capture, on the chosen printer, using whatever Windows software is appropriate. You should see the print job show up in the printer window on your screen.
• Look in the spooler directory as identified previously. You should find a file with a ".SPL" extension (hopefully only one). Copy this file to some other location on your computer.
• In the printer's window, cancel the print job.

PWML, Print Wizard Markup Language, can be added to the beginning of any file directly in the data stream or by specifying a PWML print "init" file. Print "init" files can be specified in a print profile file as well, or can be referenced on the command-line for the Print Wizard engine to use:

C:\Program files\Printwiz30\printwiz.exe /vinit=myinit.txt myfiletoprint

Localhost printing refers to printing through the PC to a local port on the PC as if this PC was a remote printer. Print Wizard supports this by setting up a loop back printer, one that prints out a network port to itself. Refer to our support document on Localhost printing to configure a local printer to do this.

The Print Wizard DLL is designed to interact with the many features of Print Wizard through program calls. These program calls are made by your own Windows program or script and result in Print Wizard doing all the print work for you. Check out our documentation on Using the Print Wizard DLL.

Passthrough printing allows a host computer to send a print job through the user's terminal (emulator) and out to an attached printer. It is sometimes called "local print", "attached print" or "slave print". This means the user must be logged in to the host. The host then sends a sequence of characters that causes the telnet or terminal emulation software to redirect its output to a local printer until a similar sequence is received to turn off the passthrough printing. In our document library we have an excellent document talking about passthrough printing, how your host support should be set up and how Anzio works. See the A Guide to Passthrough Printing document for more information.

Winsock errors normally come from some network problem that has occurred. Most often causes fit into two different categories: hardware (bad network cards, bad cabling, network down, ..) and software (firewall blocking inbound traffic, Internet security software blocking inbound traffic, personal firewall blocking port traffic, software already using a specific network port, .).

If network traffic seems normal, i.e. your web browser seems to be working, the most common problem is software related. Two major problems occur frequently, there is some security software blocking inbound and outbound network port traffic, or there is some software already using the network port Print Wizard Services, such as LPD needs.

Personal firewalls and internet security suites, such as McAfee or Symantecs, or Microsoft's own Windows firewall maybe blocking port traffic for the LPD service.

The best first test is to disable the firewall portion of your security software and see if the LPD service will run. If so, turn back on the firewall or security software and check to see if you can add the network port to an exceptions list, or add the Print Wizard program to the application exceptions list (PWLPD.EXE for Print Wizard Service or PWSERVICES.EXE for the Windows Service).

Specific printer and printer drivers have differing unprintable areas. Along with this, there are also the issues of margins. Some of this can be controlled by PWML code in an "init" file, or by setting items in the printer driver itself. Getting overlays to fit properly can be a chore. We can help. Give us a call and we can usually come up with a solution.

Overlay files either need to be in the format of a PWML file, a PCL file or a graphics file (TIFF, JPG, GIF, WMF or BMP). The problem with the graphic file formats is they may not appear clean if they were not scanned or created at the proper resolution for the printer, including the proper offsets for margins, etc. This may be a problem if you plan on moving this overlay between specific printers. A better approach is to utilize a PCL file if you can.

Another possibility is laying out the overlay with PWML (Print Wizard Markup Language). This may help you come up with a much cleaner overlay file.

If you do continue to have problems or want some help with PWML, give us a call.

"bang" commands are commands that can be included in a data stream that will change the behavior of Print Wizard in printing a portion of a file. Bang commands are discussed in detail in the Print Wizard manual.

You can split your data into multiple sections to be processed separate from other sections by including bang commands directly in the data stream. As an example, if I wanted to create a PDF of part of a file, fax another part of a file and email another part of a file, I could do this within one print job with bang commands.

Print Wizard version 3.0 introduced a new concept of 'print profiles'. Print profiles are settings that will be applied for each subsequent print job that includes that profile as a parameter.

Print profiles include information such as the printer to use, the various printer settings, number of copies to print, whether to print it, fax it, email it, etc. These can all be set up in the user interface by settings things the way you want and then saving your current settings, or by creating a profile from default settings and saving it.

Services are programs that run in the background and "watch" for events to happen. In the case of Print Wizard, this involves watching either for a print job to show up in a specific directory (despooling), or watching for a job to arrive over a network port.

Print Wizard supports two types of services, Foreground Services (previously known as Print Wizard Services) and Windows Services.

• Foreground Services are those that are run by a specific user, when logged in, watching for print jobs to appear. This does require the user to log in and start the Print Wizard Service. Alternately you could add the service to the Windows Startup folder and it would run in the background whenever the user logged in.
• Windows Services for Print Wizard are run from the Windows registry whenever the machine is actually booted up (you do not need to log a user in). These services are available for all users and will receive remote print jobs even if there is no user logged in. They normally run as a "Local System" user with very little permissions.

Both services are managed through the Print Wizard user interface. Refer to the Print Wizard manual for more information.

Print Wizard version 3.0 introduced the concept of Smart Print. With "smart print" turned on, virtually any print file that resides on your PC and has a related file association can be printed.

Print Wizard supports several types of files by their file extension, from text files with a .txt to graphics files with a .JPG extension. However some files only print properly through the applications that support them, such as a .DOC file. With "smart print" on, Print Wizard will try to determine, from the file extension, how best to print a file.

If "smart print" is turned off, Print Wizard itself will try to always print the file it is given.

Print Wizard supports several overlay files. The possible formats are a PWML file, a SPL file, an EMF file, a PCL file or a graphics file (TIFF, JPG, GIF, WMF or BMP).