Follow-You printing from Unix

We recommend that wherever possible you use print anywhere.

At present there is only one print queue (named  FY) able to access the Ricoh print system. Additional queues for the large-format plotters will be added once some technical issues have been resolved.

Any options using -F, -X or -Z under the old system are changed (although there are equivalents to most).

In order to print to the Follow You system, use:

lpr -PFY <fn>

You can then go to any printer on the Ricoh system and release the print job in the same way as for a job from the MWS.

See below for equivalents to the options available on the old system.  If you need more than one of these options, they should be specified thus:

lpr -PFY -o PageSize=A3 -o ColorModel=Color  <fn>

Page size selections will work provided that at least one paper tray is set to the requested page size.  If however you select a page size and none of the trays are set to this size, the printer uses the nearest size (or possibly the nearest size which is larger, in which case US Letter and US Legal would both be printed on A3).  Printing on A5 when no tray was set to this size results in an A5 scaled output on A4 paper which would be consistent with this assumption.

You can also use:

                                    -o ColorModel=Color

To get colour output use:

                                   -o StapleLocation=UpperLeft

To check jobs in the queue, use:

lpq -P FY

Normally a print job will disappear from the unix print queue almost immediately as it is transferred to the Ricoh system.  Jobs which have not yet been transferred can be deleted with:

lprm -P FY <jobnumber>

but realistically you are unlikely to be quick enough to delete it.

Once the job has transferred you can only delete it from the control panel of a Ricoh printer.  However, some jobs can take a considerable time to process, depending on the complexity of the PostScript.  This is because most of the Ricoh printers are not equipped with PostScript in firmware, whereas almost all unix/linux software generates PostScript output. 

In order to deal with this the CUPS queue has been configured to run Ghostscript to convert the user's PostScript file into PCL for the printer.  This happens on the machine where the lpr command is issued as the job is being transferred to the Ricoh system. 

Although most print jobs are transferred almost instantaneously, some complex PostScript files can take a significant time to process (depending on the overall CPU load on the machine at the time). PDF files containing scans of pages appear to take the longest. 

Use lpq to check that the job has disappeared before you go to the printer to release it.