Modifying the mi, mp, and _d Attributes on a PostScript Queue

Input data stream attributes store the pipelines for different input data stream types. The definition for a generic Postscript printer on a system running AIX Version 3.2.5 has four input data stream pipelines: ia (extended ASCII), in (troff), ip (passthru), and is (PostScript). The _d attribute in the colon file controls which of the four input data stream processing pipelines will, by default, be used. The default value for _d on a generic PostScript queue is s (PostScript), so the pipeline defined by is will be used.

Submitting a non-PostScript ASCII job to a PostScript queue with a generic PostScript virtual printer definition will result in the job just vanishing. The root user can modify the mi, mp, and _d attributes in the virtual printer definition so that the queue backend can determine the file type (PostScript or non-PostScript ASCII) and set the print environment accordingly.

The mi attribute uses single, comma-separated characters to name input data stream types. The mp attribute uses comma-separated strings to identify input data stream types. There is a one-to-one pairing between the characters of mi and the strings of mp.

The default value of mi for a generic PostScript virtual printer is s. The default value for mp is %%!; the first two characters of a PostScript file are %!. (Recall that printer colon file escape sequences all begin with a % so, to use a literal % in an attribute definition, it must be escaped with another %.) The virtual printer will interpret all files beginning with %! as being of data stream type s, and use the is pipeline. Since non-PostScript ASCII file do not begin with a %!, they will not be printed by this queue.

To enable ASCII printing on this queue, the root user can use lsvirprt to modify the referenced attributes as follows:

• mi=a,s
• mp=,%%!
• _d=%mi

Use lsvirprt to select the generic PostScript queue. The following prompt will appear:

To LIST attributes, enter AttributeName1 ..(* for all attributes)
To CHANGE an attribute value, enter AttributeName=NewValue
To FORMAT and EDIT an attribute value, enter AttributeName~v
To EDIT the attribute file, enter ~v
To terminate, press Enter:

At the prompt:

• Type mi=a,s and press Enter.
• Type mp=,%%! and press Enter.
• Type d=%mi and press Enter.

After each attribute re-definition is entered, the attribute's new value will be displayed, followed by the prompt.

This sets up a pairing of input data stream type a (extended ASCII) with any string at all, and input data stream type s (PostScript) with the string %!. Input data streams that do not being with a %! will be processed by the ia pipeline, and all input data streams that do begin with a %! will be processed by the is pipeline.

Note: With a generic PostScript virtual printer without the modifications described above, it is possible to print non-PostScript ASCII files by overidding the input data stream type from the command line. For instance, the d flag fo qprt can be used as follows:

qprt -Pqueue_name -da /etc/motd

This command requests that the file named /etc/motd be printed on the queue named queue_name and that the input data stream be treated as ASCII (the ia pipeline will be used).