RPM Technical Features

Insert & Append Bytes

Inserting

You can insert bytes (using our built-in byte editor) or a file before the print job data.

Example uses include:

• Set the printer to a specific mode (useful in pass-through printing)
• Send an overlay to the printer, such as a form or watermark
• Insert a custom banner page or report header

Appending

You can also append bytes (again, with our byte editor) or a file after the print job data.

Example uses include:

• Return the printer to the "normal" mode
• Append a document trailer

Read more about RPM Inserting & Appending Bytes

Banner Page Support

RPM asks whether a banner page should be inserted into the data before printing. This selection is used for raw and filter type queues. The drop list offers three choices: suppress banner, always print, and when requested.

• Suppress banner: RPM will not insert a banner page
• Always print: RPM will always insert a banner page
• When requested: RPM will insert a banner page when requested by the client

Insert Location

Read more about RPM's Banner Page Support

COM Filter Interface

The RPM COM Filter provides a rich programmatic interface to a print job, including the actual print data and the settings transmitted with the job. This allows a developer to adapt code to work directly with RPM for the most efficient processing available on Windows 2000 and Windows NT.

COM filters are only available with RPM Elite.

For more information, please contact Technical Support with your questions.

Convert LF to CR/LF

One of our more frequent requests is to solve the "stair-step" problem. This often happens when a UNIX file is sent to a DOS printer. Instead of seeing this:

You might see something like the following:

Both Filter and Pass-through queues support LF to CRLF; text queues perform this translation automatically.

Read more about converting LF to CR/LF

Character Translations

RPM supports custom character translations. The user can create named translation tables that specify one-to-one single byte translations, that is, any character to any other character.

Reported uses of this feature include:

• Converting characters for a specific printer (typically accented characters)
• Translating unwanted characters to a character that the printer ignores, or which RPM would remove

Read more about Character Translations

ASA Carriage Control

RPM translates ASA Carriage Control format and prints the results using text, pass-through or filter methods. This eliminates the need for the host computer to perform the translation into a more standard format such as PCL or PDF.

RPM supports the following ASA commands:

Blank	Next line
+	Return to first column of current line (overstrike)
-	Triple line space
0	Double line space
1	Form feed

Read more about ASA carriage control

Convert EBCDIC to ASCII

RPM can convert EBCDIC text to ASCII. RPM also supports country-specific extensions to EBCDIC, translating characters not used in the US or United Kingdom to the appropriate ISO 8859-1 codes.

RPM allows the user to select the extended EBCDIC codes from a menu of languages. RPM also attempts to match the current locale setting to an EBCDIC extension if one has not already been selected.

Read more about EBCDIC to ASCII conversion

Convert SCS to ASCII

RPM can interpret SCS codes and translate them to ASCII.  For non-text printing (pass-through and filter) RPM creates line-oriented output using carriage return for overstrikes as appropriate.

For text output RPM preserves the SCS markup and reproduces attributes such as margins, font size, character position, etc.

Benefits to using RPM for SCS translation

The primary benefit to moving SCS rendering off the host computer is reduced CPU time. Clients have reported print times reduced from minutes to seconds, though results will vary depending on the host utilization.

Secondary benefits include: ability to capture to disk using an RPM filter queue; and support for country-specific extensions to EBCDIC.

Read more about SCS to ASCII

Use Installed Code Page

RPM is able to use installed code pages to translate print jobs into a form that Windows can print. Please note installed code pages refer to code pages Windows can use. To acquire code pages and related fonts that are not already installed on your system, we recommend the Windows Update web site available in the Help menu of many Microsoft Office products.

Code pages typically have a maximum character length of 1 or 2. Single-byte code pages include East European, and double-byte code pages include Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional).

Code pages and text printing

RPM code page support was designed for text printing. RPM can successfully translate single- and double-byte data, scale the font, and print to any Windows printer.

Issues to be aware of with code pages and text printing:

• Depending on the code page, the choice of fonts may be limited
• Fonts are processed by Windows, not the printer, so print speed may be reduced

Code pages and non-text printing

Issues to be aware of with code pages and non-text processing:

• Translating single-byte data may result in the OEM character set under Windows 95/98. This may or may not be compatible with your printer
• Translating double-byte data will result in Unicode data under Windows 95/98
• All code page translation will create Unicode data under Windows 2000 and NT

For these reasons, code page translation is disabled by default for non-text queues; however, this function is available.

Read more about using RPM's Installed Code Page

Remove PCL Codes

RPM optionally strips PCL codes from a print job. Text printing does this automatically, but you can also select it for pass-through and filter printing. This feature is useful in receiving print jobs from host systems that do not support your printer. For instance, when printing from an AS/400 to an HP Deskjet 692c, the AS/400 does not support a print driver. In this case, the AS/400 can be configured to print to an HP4, then RPM will strip the PCL codes in the data and format the data for the 692c using the Windows print driver.

Example uses include:

• Print data on a non-HP printer
• Capture data more easily for a spreadsheet or database application

Read more about Removing PCL Codes

Other Options

RPM can remove bytes at the start of the data, removing the bytes from the beginning of a print job. This is great to use if the remote host is sending text data that starts with some number of non-text characters. Other features include:

• Number of bytes to remove
• Manage print job properties. RPM will try to set Windows' job information, such as document title and user, from information in the control file
• Suspend queue on printer error. RPM will place the print jobs on hold if it is unable to open the printer for spooling.