Setting up a new printer

by Anand Kumria
<akumria@acm.org>
January 2005

Introduction

Occassionally we decide, either for issues of cost or quality, to change which printers particular jobs and/or print runs are sent to.

These changes require some setup (on the order of a day) to complete, this document intends to outline the required steps. PDFs file are generated and then sent to the print for reproduction on their equipment.

What printer?

Each printer has some particular equipment. While it may, or may not, natively understand Postscript there is usually a Postscript Printer Description (PPD) file available.

If the printer does not have, is unable to determine which PPD, or indicates that the job may run on a number of machine not known ahead of time - you should use the Adobe Distiller PPD (already installed).

Adobe Distiller

Distiller is configured to "watch" particular directories, specifically X, Y and Z, and when PostScript files appear in them, it converts them automatically to PDFs.

It also has a series of configuration parameters (known as "joboptions"), which the printer should be able to provide either as a file containing them. Or as a descriptive set of instructions (see options foo to value bar. etc.).

Quark Xpress

Xpress also has a set of configuration parameters that you will want to modify on a per-printer basis. These are known as print styles and contain a reference to the PPD file.

You have to setup that reference by, first, going to the Tools menu and selecting PPD Manager. Then select update and you will know where PPD files are stored on disk.

Copy the PPD file that you have to that location. You should then go through the print style dialog, in the edit menu, and either import the print style or create one on the basis of setting provided to you.

Transferring files

Generally FTP is used as the transport mechanism, although sometimes we've been known to burn CD if the PDFs are too large to upload in time. With FTP you will generally be given a shared account. This is bad. It is important you specify that this is so:

and get a private one. This is another reason to burn a CD — if you don't get a private login.

Summary