Q: I want to receive a print job in RPM Remote Print Manager® ("RPM") from a System i (iSeries or AS/400) without any printer control codes or with PCL printer codes. Is either of these possible?
A: The AS/400 setup instructions detail the steps necessary to configure a Remote OUTQ on a "System i" (iSeries, AS/400, etc) to send print data to RPM. The instructions as documented have Host Print Transform disabled which will cause the Spool File to be sent to RPM in the native format. To determine the format of a Spool File, open the Attributes of the file and locate the Printer Device Type attribute. It could be one of *SCS, *AFPDS, *IPDS, or *USRASCII. Of these types, the most common and the one RPM natively supports is SCS and these instructions mostly apply to this type.
To cause the System i to perform the EBCDIC to ASCII conversion of an SCS file leaving plain text, use all settings specified in the above document except the following. Doing so will cause RPM to receive plain ASCII text without printer control codes.
- Host Print Transform: *YES
- Manufacturer type and model: *WSCST
- Workstation customizing object: QWPDEFAULT
- Library: QSYS
To cause the System i to send PCL 5 data to RPM, use all the settings in the above document except the following which will cause RPM to receive a PCL 5 document from the System i. This section applies to spool files of types SCS and AFPDS, though the PCL created from AFPDS is typically a lot more complex.
- Host Print Transform: *YES
- Manufacturer type and model: *HP4
The remaining types, IPDS and USRASCII are unique. IPDS spool files can be sent only to IPDS printers or print servers which support IPDS such as our ExcelliPrint® software. IPDS is an acronym for Intelligent Printer Data Stream, which is a host-to-printer data stream originally developed by IBM. USRASCII is typically found on spool files sent to an IBM host from non-IBM print clients or created by custom applications which create custom spool files. USRASCII does not represent a specific format, so the format sent to RPM may need to be visually inspected by someone familiar with the format.