Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!longway!std-unix From: domo@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Re: Printing Standards? Message-ID: <797@longway.TIC.COM> Date: 7 Jul 90 14:50:51 GMT References: <789@longway.TIC.COM> Sender: std-unix@longway.TIC.COM Reply-To: domo@tsa.co.uk Organization: The Standard Answer Ltd. Lines: 30 Approved: jsq@longway.tic.com (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) From: Dominic Dunlop In article <789@longway.TIC.COM> urban@rand.org (Mike Urban) writes: >What incipient or existing standards, if any, specify >the Shell-level printer interface (lpr and its friends)? Aha. That terminal ``r'' tells me you're a Berkeley-ite. Which is too bad, I'm afraid. The draft 1003.2 shell and tools standard specifies a pretty-much emasculated version of the System V.2 (or thereabouts) lp print spooling command (which some might argue was fairly impotent in the first place). As far as ``friends'' go (lpadmin, enable, lpshut and so on in the case of System V), none are specified. This is seen as 1003.7 (administration) territory. If you can get hold of a draft (somebody in Rand must have one), you'll find lots of extended description about how little a conforming application can assume from lp, and rationale about how it should be possible to implement it as a shell script, namely cat > /dev/lp The X/Open Portability Guide, edition 3, volume 1, does little better: it describes a few more options, and the cancel utility, but they're all optional -- in effect, all an XPG-conformant system has to offer is the interface described in 1003.2. All rather depressing really. -- Dominic Dunlop Volume-Number: Volume 20, Number 111