Postscript printer

You can change the default printer used by Pspen by setting the environment variable PSPRINTER. If you wanted to use the printer ``sp405'' by default, for example, you would do

setenv PSPRINTER sp405

You can override this on pspen command line with the getpar option printer=.

When you try using Pspen you may sometimes get no plot or a partial plot. Probably in such a case you got the message
lpr: copy file is too large
or a flurry of
/var: file system full
complaints on the console of the workstation attached to the printer. Most probably you just generated a postscript file using Pspen that is bigger than your default printer spooler setup allows.

The best solution is to get your default printer spooler setup changed. If that is not possible, instead of Pspen do

Pspen out=file.ps

This causes Pspen to write the postscript output to ``file.ps'' instead of trying to ship it off to the printer directly. Next log in to the workstation attached to the postscript printer, cd to the directory you were working in, and send the plot on its way manually by doing

lpr -Pprinter_name -s file.ps

Here ``printer_name'' is the name of the printer you want to use (if you've set the PSPRINTER environment variable you could just use -P$PSPRINTER). The ``-s'' option tells lpr not to copy the file to the spool directory but to use it from where it is. Cumbersome and annoying, but what you may have to do at some sites.