Path: utzoo!attcan!sobeco!mfp
From: mfp@sobeco.UUCP (Mark F. Proudman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: IBM AIX
Summary: IBM AIX's spooler
Message-ID: <379@sobeco.UUCP>
Date: 15 Sep 88 14:27:02 GMT
References: <17017@adm.ARPA> <807@riddle.UUCP> <470@pan.UUCP>
Organization: Sobeco Group - Montreal, Canada
Lines: 19

In article <470@pan.UUCP>, jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) writes:
> But I sure do like defining the serial line
> characteristics once, and only once, and having them work correctly all
> the time - even if I say 'cat foo > /dev/lp0'.
> 
The meaning of "correctly" is in doubt here.  `cat foo > /dev/lp0` is not
supposed to print "corrrectly".  Line feeds should not be mapped to LF-CR,
etc, unless I specifically tell the driver to do that.  That is what `cat`
is for:  send this stream of bytes there, and don't f**k with it on the way.

IBM, in its attempt to make the spooler friendly (the command is now
"print"), has only made it inflexible.  As I believe someone has pointed
out earlier, much software depends on the ability to send to a device
a binary stream of bytes.  This is difficult under AIX. (on the RT at any
rate).

Mark Proudman	uunet!attcan!sobeco!mfp
		(514) 878 9090
"It is agreed that the ice is thin here" - K&R.