blank pages printing at end of report

[crystalized]

Hi All,

I am new to PCL so please let me know if I need to include more information etc. Here is my problem:

We have a bunch of reports created by Peoplesoft (which use PCL codes to control output etc.) The reports are generated as .LIS files.

We have a DOS batch file with a print command in it with the following:

print /d:<UNC printer path goes here> %1

This allows our users to generate the LIS files and then drag them onto the batch file - which prints them to the designated printer.

The problem is that this process consistently results in blank pages being "printed" at the end of the print job. The issue is further confused by the fact that this happens with pretty much any of the reports (using a variety of PCL codes).

I am currently investigating whether the printer has a supress blank pages capability. I have also examined DOS for other options - but I did not find any alternatives that worked with the drag and drop method (although perhaps my syntax was incorrect). I have looked at the files themselves and they do all seem to end with a formfeed character (which I can see when viewing the file in TextPad) - but the users will not be able to strip this off the file.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for what I might look into etc? I am not sure if this a problem that I can resolve based on PCL - but I thought someone here might have some ideas I haven't tried.

Crystal
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Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

-Oscar Wilde

 

[jlasman]

What printer?

LaserJets won't print a blank page, EXCEPT when it is given an explicit formfeed(^L).

DeskJets, however, are not page printers, and interpret each byte and line as they arrive at the printer. So there is no way to interpret a page as being blank before it is too late.

Maybe the blanks are caused by the print program and this is not a PCL issue at all.

Jim Asman

 

[crystalized]

I am not sure if it is a PCL issue, but I figured that people in this forum may have encountered a wide variety of printing issues and may have some advice for me.

At least one of the printers is a laser jet - but I am not sure about the other ones. I will explore this further.

Crystal
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Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

-Oscar Wilde

 

[jmanj]

This is definitely not a PCL issue. You mentioned .lis then I supposed you are using SQR. You can post your SQR program in the Peoplesoft forum and hope somebody can digest your program.

 

[Buff1]

>LaserJets won't print a blank page, EXCEPT when it is >given an explicit formfeed

I've always encountered that if you go past the last printable line, a laserjet will eject the page. does this
no longer occur ?

 

[jlasman]

Well sure, if you feed the printer enought blank lines to trigger the formfeed you will get a blank page. But if there are less than a page full of linefeeds on the last page of the job, the printer won't eject the blank page without the formfeed. Any relatively modern LaserJet, maybe LJ2 or greater behave this way.



Jim Asman

 

[jmanj]

You are very confused about SQR and PCL. Most of the time SQR will produce a PCL codes during print routines. The .lis file is evident of this function. In fact almost SQR commands has PCL equivalent. It has it's own library to interpret into PCL command statements. As for the blank extra pages, this is common problem if the SQR does not control when to break into the next page. Here's some SQR commands that controls paging and hope may help you understanding what's going on. Your DOS batch file has nothing to do with your extra pages either. The batch file is just used to associate a file and print it without the users going into many dos commads.
Here's the sample commands:

NEW-PAGE - Forces to a new page.

ON-BREAK - It can go to next page depending on the settings of the BEFORE and AFTER flags.

Printer DECLARATIONS - This is the settings to define the printer types, margins, page size, fonts, max columns, max lines, orientations...etc.

HEADERS and FOOTERS settings also affect the total page size.


PCL encode statements that will do printer resets or perforation skip.

Mutiple report declaration - You may have multi report in one program and there is a need to control which report is to be printed.

OTHERS - Font size can also affect printing. The heavier the fonts the more it pushes more lines per inch.

 

[crystalized]

Hi All,

Thanks for your posts. I have discovered that the bug was not specified correctly. I had been told that the extra pages were triggered every time someone used the "drag and drop" printing method. I now find that the problem is only with one printer and so I have sent the person responsible for managing the printer some info on supressing blank pages etc.

Sorry for bogging down your forum with this problem!

Crystal
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Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

-Oscar Wilde