printop : A printer-utility    

Printop is a utility, useful to view and affect printer queues. It's a
frontend to lpc, lpq and lprm with the full functionality of those.
This should prevent operators, systemadministrators or users from
learning all the printercommands of lpc, lprm and lpq and hacking around
on their keyboards.

Files:		It's just the file "printop", two default-files
		"printop.cfg" and "printop.cmd" and the documentation
		(in directory germandoc is a german version). The
		documentation-files are: README, INSTRUCTIONS, COPYRIGHT,
		INSTALLATION, HISTORY, EXAMPLES.

Start:		Just execute "printop". printop will show you the
		status of the default-printer. To change the default
		to another printer search in file "INSTALLATION". You
		can also specify the printer via commandline-argument
		(eg. "printop laser2").

Usage:		After you called printop there appears a window that
		is divided in two parts. In the left part you find
		the information about the actual printer and the
		queue belonging to it, in the right part are the
		control-elements.
		The information in the left part of the window is
		divided in three socalled listboxes and one label.
		The label in the upperleft corner shows the name
		of the actually chosen printer. The big listbox
		underneath holds the print-jobs that are to be printed
		by that printer. If there's nothing to be printed by
		that printer the listbox is empty.
		Beneath that there are two listboxes. The left one
		displays the status of the queue like the command
		lpq prints it. If there are no entries in the queue
		there is written "no entries". In the right listbox 
		you find the status of the "lpc status"-command. Normally
		the listbox displays things like "queing is enabled"
		and "no entries" etc. Thats all about the display.
		On the right side there are lots of buttons. They are
		divided in four panels. The pannels are:

	Printing: Here you can control the printing. This means there
		is nothing done to the queue, but you can stop the
		printing or start it again.

		Enable Printing: Executes "lpc start" so the printing
			is enabled again and a printer-daemon is
			started.	
		Disable Printing: Executes "lpc stop" so the job actually
			in printing will be finished and afterwards the
			printing will be stopped.
		Stop now!: Executes "lpc abort" so the printer-daemon
			is killed immediately, no more data is send to
			the printer and the printing is turned to off
			(otherwise a new daemon would be started).
		New Daemon: If by accident (whatever accident that
			could be) the daemon died and some jobs are
			left in the queue you can start a new daemon 
			to do the rest of the printing.

	Queue: This is for controlling the queue. Here you can choose
		a queue to be displayed, forbid or allow the appending
		of new printjobs or simple redisplay the same queue.
		to be appended

		Choose Queue: If you click on this button you get
			a menu from wich you can choose the queue
			that you want to see.
		Rescan Queue: The chosen queue will be displayed
			again to show you the actual status of it.
		Enable Queue: The enqueing of print-jobs is enabled
			(a call of "lpc enable").
		Disable Queue: The enqueing of print-jobs is disabled,
			no new jobs can be appended to the queue
			(a call of "lpc disable").
			
	Entries: The commands in this panel refer to selected entries
		of the queue, not the whole queue. Entries can be
		selected by clicking on them in the big listbox.

		Entry -> Top: The selected entries will be pushed
			to the top of the queue (one by one). The
			job that is actually in print will be
			printed to end, of course. (The command
			"lpc topq" doesn't set the numbers of the
			entry correctly but that's not my fault.)
		Remove Entry: The selected entries are removed from
			the queue (after a query).

	Program: Well, here are those buttons, that have nothing to
		do with printers. They are just for the control of
		printop itself.

		About: A window pops up containing the version number
			of printop and my address. I would be very
			happy if you'd write me a postcard (as a payment
			for my efforts). For questions, hints, advice
			you can e-mail me to the given internet-address.
		Quit: With this button you quit the printop tool. There
			is no query before quitting 'cause nothing bad can
			happen by leaving printop.


That's all folks. Have fun and enjoy.


printop is copyrighted by Olaf Gellert, 1995. License to copy, publish,
and distribute is granted to everyone provided that three conditions are
met:

- my name and email address, "Olaf Gellert <gellert@informatik.uni-
  hamburg.de>" must remain in the distribution and any documentation
  that was not part of this distribution. In particular, my name
  and address must be shown in the About popup.
- if you redistribute a modified version, the fact that the version
  is modified must be stated in all places that my name is shown.
- this copyright notice must be included in your distribution.

If these conditions are met, you can do whatever you like. The idea is
that I would be annoyed if someone else claimed he wrote the thing, and
I don't want bugs introduced by others attributed to me.

There are no implied or expressed warranties for printop. I do not claim
it is good for anything whatsoever, and if you lose your precious data or
your cat dies this is entirely your problem.

If you have any suggestions for future versions contact me:

        gellert@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

If you like and use (sometimes or everyday) this software, send me a
postcard! Just a "Hello. Nice program. Thanx. ?name? ?address?" or
something like that. Or write what comes to your mind.
Send the postcard to:

                Olaf Gellert
                Verstcken 9
                22297 Hamburg
                Germany

I like getting postcards...
