There are 4 ways that you can use in order to tell a laser printer, what tray/drawer to use for the paper. The first 3 betow can be used for the mime type PCL (which is recommended), and the fourth option can be used for the mime type, Driver print.

 

The 4 solutions are:

 

1.Select the tray via the paper type on the page style in the template.

2.Use a fixed PCL command/sequence to select a tray number or a paper type.

3.Use a fixed PJL command/sequence to select a tray number or a paper type.

4.Install the printer once for each tray selection and use driver print.

 

 

1.The paper type in the page style. The most flexible and most hardware independent way is to select the tray/drawer indirectly by selecting a paper type on the page style. Here you can select one of the many page styles e.g. plain or preprinted to indirectly select the tray/drawer on the printer. You just need to setup the printer e.g. via a browser or via the printer menu to assign special paper types to each of the trays.

The advantages are:

 

2.Assign a fixed PCL sequence. You setup a fixed PCL sequence to include a fixed PCL command in the PCL print data stream. This can be set via the meta data key, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pcl in three places: 1) On the printer on the Extra PCL command option. 2) You can also set it up in the workflow by assigning a value to the meta data, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pcl (if used this will overrule the Extra PCL command setup on the printer) 3) You can also setup a value for the meta data key, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pcl via the meta data key element in the designer (if this is filled out, it will overrule both the printer setup and the workflow setup). The best way to select the drawer is to set the paper type of each drawer on the printer and then insert a PCL command to select the same paper type. The easiest way to do that, is to select it on the page style.

 

Here is a list of the available paper types:

 

 

Please notice, that the PCL commands must be written exactly as above. They are case sensitive and the space between ‘d’ and ‘S’ in ‘EC10WdCard Stock’ must be included.

 

Notice, that even though the printer menu might show each of these printer types in your local language you should still use the english command shown above.

 

If the printer does not support selection of the drawer via the paper type, you can use an alternative command: EC&l#H, where the # is a PCL drawer number. So if you e.g. want to select PCL drawer 5 the command is: EC&l5H.

 

Please notice, that the PCL drawer number can range from 1 to 255 and is NOT the same number as the physical drawer on the printer and that the number depends on the exact printer model used. For some printers you even need to select drawer numbers in the range 250-255, but for most you should try values in the range 1-9.

 

The advantage is, that you do not need to change any options on the printers. The disadvantage are:

•That the PCL tray/drawer number is not the same as the physical drawer/tray number, so you might need to test a lot of different values to find the right one to use.

•The PCL tray mapping varies depending on the printer manufacturer, the printer model and in some cases also depending on the number of installed trays,

•You can only select a fixed tray/drawer for the complete print job.

 

3.Assign a fixed PJL sequence. You setup a fixed PJL sequence to include a fixed PJL command in the PCL print data stream. This can be set via the meta data key, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pcl in three places: 1) On the printer on the Extra PJL command option. 2) You can also set it up in the workflow by assigning a value to the meta data, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pjl (if used this will overrule the Extra PJL command setup on the printer) 3) You can also setup a value for the meta data key, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pjl via the meta data key element in the designer (if this is filled out, it will overrule both the printer setup and the workflow setup). The actual PJL command to insert depend on the exact printer model and the manufacturer, so it might be a good idea to install the correct printer driver in windows and select print to file to verify what PJL sequence to specify. This can e.g. be @PJL TRAY=5

 

The advantage is, that you do not need to change any options on the printers.

The disadvantage are:

•That the PJL sequence is not the same on all printers, so you might need to check documentation of the printer or to test with the printer driver to identify the format required.

•You can only select a fixed tray/drawer for the complete print job.

 

4.Install a printer (that is installed on the operating system) for each tray selection - Driver print. This is only an option for the operating systems (Windows), where the printer driver can convert the print data stream to the right print data stream. This is selected via driver print as the mime type on the printer setup.

The advantages with this are:

•This is easy to setup.

•You just install one printer in the operating system (Windows) for each tray selection and set the tray selection directly on the printer driver.

•You can use the same procedure for any printer as long as you have the right printer driver for the printer.

The disadvantages are:

•Each version of the printer (one for each tray selection, that you want to use) takes up one entry of the number of supported printers in your license for InterFormNG. Normally InterFormNG is sold with support for a limited number of printers.

•If you also want to combine the tray selection with e.g. duplex/simplex, then you will need to install a printer for each combination of tray and duplex/simplex. If you e.g. want to be able to use either tray 1 and tray 2 in both simplex and duplex on a single printer, then you will need to install 4 printers for that single printer: One for simplex with tray 1, one for duplex with tray 1, one for simplex with tray 2 and one for duplex with tray 2.

•You loose flexibility with this driver print solution. InterForm cannot control anything in the output except the graphical layout.

•The driver may or may not change the layout depending on the settings. Perhaps a margin is added in the driver or other alterations ay happen in the driver. InterForm has no control over what happens in the printer driver. Does a printer driver upgrade change the output? Only the manufacturer of the printer driver can confirm, if that is the case or not.

•The printing speed when you print with a printer driver is as fast (or as slow) as when printing e.g. a PDF file on the same machine via the operating system, but usually printing PCL or ZPL will be faster than printing with driver print.