Transparent printing is also known as slave printing, remote printing, local printing, pass-through printing or terminal printing. The following table lists the escape sequences needed to have transparent printing work. In all cases, \033 indicates the escape character, ASCII value 27.
| Emulation |
On |
Off |
| Adml |
\033A |
\033B |
| AT386 |
\033[5i |
\033[4i |
| SCOANSI1 |
\033[5i |
\033[4i |
| TVI925 |
\033` |
\033a |
| VT52 |
\033W |
\033X |
| VT100 |
\033[5i |
\033[4i |
| VT220 |
| VT320 |
| Wyse502 |
^X |
^T |
| Wyse60 |
\033d# |
^T |
1The actual SCO console does not support transparent printing. However, the SCOANSI console emulation in TERM and TinyTERM has been designed with transparent print capabilities.
2The sequence used to turn transparent print on for Wyse50 (^X) is the same sequence that is used to end the file transfer for ZMODEM and WTERMCRC. To have TinyTERM or TERM accept the sequence as “transparent print on” in this emulation, change the file transfer protocol to something else, such as XMODEM.
The :PN= and :PS= entries for the emulation must be defined in the /etc/termcap file.
Example for Wyse 50: :PN=^x:PS=^t:
Example for VT100: :PN=\E[5i:PS=\E[4i:
To test transparent printing, you can do the following:
- Create the following short UNIX/XENIX script file and name it tprint:
# Test for transparent print in vt100 mode. \033 is esc.
echo "\033[5i"
cat $1
echo "\033[4i"
Change the echo commands to match your emulation’s transparent print codes.
- Set the permissions on the tprint file to read/write/execute:
chmod 755 tprint
- To print a text file enter “tprint filename” at a shell prompt, replacing “filename” with the name of any text file; e.g., /etc/hosts.
For more information on transparent printing and other print options, please see this screencast.
Things to check if this fails:
- The UNIX “TERM” environment variable doesn’t agree with TERM’s emulation.
- The proper escape sequences are not in your /etc/termcap file.
- TERM has been set to send all printer output to a disk file instead of the printer.
Transparent Print Issues
Why are the lines for boxes being replaced with characters?
The font set that the printer uses does not support those characters. Most printer have the capability of switching the font sets. The font set that TERM and TinyTERM uses is 437 MS-DOS Latin US. Many printers are setup by default to use 1252 Windows Latin US (ANSI), which does not have the line draw characters.
The printer is not capturing the LPT1 or LPT2 device in Windows 95
In the Configure menu item Printer Setup set the Device line to DEVICE, and in the Device Name field enter the port name of the printer.
With a serial connection to the server, transparent printing prints garbage or stops printing
Change the flow control to XON/XOFF. To change the flow control with TERM go to the Configure menu and select Communication. In TinyTERM, change the protocol=none line in the .tap file to protocol=xon.
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