4.4 Hardcopy

Finally, you are happy with the way your graph looks, so you want to print it out on paper. Many types of hardcopy devices are supported within plotdata, and the one you will be using is the postscript type. PostScript is the name of a ``page description language'' that is understood by many high-quality printers out there, including the ones at Brock. The printers are known to plotdata by their Unix names, and the ones you need to know about are:

bj-physics

the printer of choice, this is the BubbleJet printer in B203. Your output is available for pickup whenever B203 is open, which is most of the time. At the moment, Department of Physics is subsidizing the cost of course-related printing on this printer; please, do not abuse this privilege as this will result in an immediate termination of this policy.

ps

this is the central printer of the University's Computing Services. It is located in F301 and your output is available for pickup during the normal working hours.

psd

the same printer! - except when addressed by this name, the multipage output sent to it gets printed in duplex mode, i.e. on both sides of the page.

lw-physics

this is the printer in the Physics Office. Prior to printing there, please obtain secretary's permission so that your print jobs do not interfere with her work. Again, locked after hours.

f316

as the name suggests, this printer is located in F316, and is only convenient when you are next door, in F317. Since some evening classes use those rooms, there usually is a TA on duty to give you your output.

Once you know the name of the printer you want to use, get the hardcopy output by following this example:

PLOTDATA: hardcopy
 HPL HP Laserjet
 PS  PostScript
Enter: device code >> ps
Device=PostScript
HARDCOPY COMMANDS
 P queue | print
 S file  | save file
Enter: hardcopy command >> print bj-physics

The only things you have to type here are hardcopy, the command; ps, the printer type; and print bj-physics, the command to print to a given printer, bj-physics in this example. The rest of the text shown above is supplied by plotdata to prompt you.

As you can tell, you could also save the output to a file for printing later or for including it in your lab report, by typing save file.ps at the last prompt.