I would like to concur with Dennis' statements about printing
in the Unix world. Unfortunately, the vast amount of printing
done on Unix servers in the commercial world are *not* tightly
bound to the underlying printing system such that page counts
are readily available at all points in the printing process.
...jay
dcarney at us.ibm.com wrote:
>> >(Note that the originating application or print driver
> >knows perfectly well how many pages are in the document
> >and doesn't need to ask the IPP Printer for that info
> >anyway to build a 'gas gauge'.)
> >
> >Cheers,
> >- Ira McDonald
> > High North Inc
>> I think there are significant exceptions to your statement. In a Windows
> environment, for example, the driver is not necessarily in charge of the whole
> process. A "normal" driver may never know how many pages are in the job or is
> likely to be able to find out only after the job had been fully built.
>> In Windows, the "originating application" (like Microsoft Word), may know the
> number of pages, but doesn't do job monitoring. The port monitor in Windows
> might know the number of pages, but only if either 1) it parses the data coming
> through (whether it be PCL, PS, whatever), or 2) it finds it out from someone
> else. The spooler will sometimes know the information (although I can tell you
> from experience that what the spooler thinks and what the printer thinks are
> *very* often two different things). And note that with a Windows 9x client
> printing through a Windows NT print server, the job is sent from Windows 9x
> already formatted and hence the spooler on Windows NT knows nothing about the
> number of pages in the job, meaning the port monitor doesn't know either.
>> As far as an application that isn't "in-line" (that is, isn't part of the job
> submission process), they in general will never know anything except from the
> printer.
>> In the Unix world, a source told me that in general, in this specific area, the
> effect of the architecture is similar to Windows: no one who might be
> responsible for showing status knows how many pages there are.
>> Now, I agree that there are ways around the above problems, and I agree that
> there are holes in my comments above. However, I believe that in a general
> sense, it is non-trivial to set up a system as part of either the Windows or
> Unix print subsystems, or as a stand-alone application, such that the monitoring
> application *really* "knows" the total number of pages.
>> Dennis Carney
> IBM Printing Systems (303)924-0565