Printer Guide

PIRL maintains four printers locally and provides access to numerous other printers throughout LPL. This page is an overview of these resources: it discusses the basics of PIRL's printers and lists additional sources of information for each, and it explains at a high level the organization of PIRL printing services.

PIRL Printers

PIRL has four printers available to users that are maintained locally. These include a black-and-white laser printer, a color laser printer, a wide-format inkjet printer, and a dye-sublimation printer. These are listed below according to their common-use names; in general, the common-use name is also the name of the main print queue for the printer. (See below for a discussion of print queues versus printers.)

PIRL-printer (HP LaserJet 4300dtn laser printer)

Located outside the PIRL user room, Sonett 100.

PIRL-printer is a fast, reliable PostScript Level 3 black-and-white laser printer capable of duplex (double-sided) printing. There are four queues for PIRL-printer:

PIRL-printer - for duplex printing; same as "ps."
ps - for duplex printing; same as "PIRL-printer."
pst - for duplex printing in "tumble" mode; the duplex page flip occurs on the short edge of the page.
ps-ss - for single-sided (simplex) printing.

Additional Resources for PIRL-printer

http://pirl-printer.lpl.arizona.edu - Check the status of the printer (not its queues).
Printing (Raster) Images to the PIRL Printers - Read a User Note about printing raster images to the PIRL printers, including PIRL-printer.

PIRL-color (Tektronix Phaser 740 color laser printer)

Located outside the PIRL user room, Sonett 100.

PIRL-color is a slower, PostScript Level 2 color laser printer capable of duplex (double-sided) printing. It supports color transparency printing, and PIRL maintains a queue and media tray specifically for this task. There are seven queues for PIRL-color:

PIRL-color - for duplex printing; same as "PIRL-color-duplex."
pc - for duplex printing; same as "PIRL-color-duplex."
PIRL-color-duplex - for duplex printing; same as "PIRL-color."
PIRL-color-tumble - for duplex printing in "tumble" mode; the duplex page flip occurs on the short edge of the page.
PIRL-color-simplex - for simplex (single-sided) printing.
PIRL-color-transparency - for printing color transparencies.

Addtional Resources for PIRL-color

http://pirl-color.lpl.arizona.edu - Check the status of the printer (not its queues).
Printing Transparencies at PIRL - Learn how to print transparencies to PIRL-color.
Printing (Raster) Images to the PIRL Printers - Read a User Note about printing raster images to the PIRL printers, including PIRL-color.

HP-5000 (HP DesignJet 5000 6-color inkjet printer)

Located in Sonett 102J.

The HP-5000 is a high-quality, wide-format, roll-media inkjet printer suitable for printing posters for conferences, public outreach, and other purposes. It supports a wide range of paper and ink types; normally it contains a 42-inch wide roll of paper, but some specialized media is available only in a 36-inch wide format. There is only one queue for the HP-5000:

hp-5000 - for high-quality, wide-format prints.

Additional Resources for the HP-5000

http://hp-5000.lpl.arizona.edu - Check the status of the printer (not its queue).
How to Create a Poster - Learn how to create a poster for the HP-5000.
Easy Command-Line Printing to the Large-Format Printer - Learn the easy way to print to the HP-5000.
Using OpenOffice to Print to the HP-5000 - Learn how to print to the HP-5000 from OpenOffice.

JXblack/JXcolor (Sharp JX-7000 dye-sublimation printer)

Located in Sonett 102J.

The JX-7000 is a high-quality, page-sized color dye sublimation printer suitable for printing near photographic-quality black-and-white or color prints. There are two queues for the JX-7000:

JXblack - for black-and-white prints.
JXcolor - for color prints.

Additional Resources for the JX-7000

Using the JX-7000 Dye Sublimation Printer - Learn how to use the JX-7000.

Color Correction

PIRL does not possess the resources to perform detailed color correction. However, there are a number of resources that you can use yourself to help fine tune the color of your prints. There are innumerable color charts available which are designed to serve innumerable purposes.

For a general introduction to colors, John Savard has written an introductory guide. For more information, there are a wealth of color resources available at efg's Computer Lab.

Here are some CIE chromaticity charts with descriptions:

The CIE Colour System by Mark Roberts.
Color Space.
Chromaticity Diagrams.
ppmcie is a program available on the PIRL systems that will produce a customized CIE color chart as a PPM image. This is an example CIE color chart that you can use.

Other LPL Printers

PIRL provides access to other printers at LPL; these are not maintained by PIRL staff, however, nor does PIRL maintain guides for their use. The following are useful resources regarding these other queues, including the LPL Central Computing Systems (LCS) printing facilities:

PIRLprinters - Examine the PIRL print server, which manages print queues for PIRL.
LCS Printing - Read the LCS FAQ regarding general LPL printing services.

Print Queues Versus Printers

A print queue is the collection of zero or more files that are printing or are queued up for printing to a printer. The printer itself generally knows about only one file: the one currently printing; a print server must manage the printer's queue. In a personal computer environment, such as one might find at one's home, the printer is often attached directly to the print server, which is often the same machine from which the print job was sent. Furthermore, it might be relatively uncommon to find such an environment with more than one queue for a printer.

In a large, heterogeneous environment such as PIRL (or LPL in general), these systems are often widely dispersed and sometimes support multiple queues. PIRL printers are located throughout the PIRL facility, and non-PIRL printers are located even more broadly, perhaps across campus. Three of the four PIRL printers are accessed through multiple queues. Managing such a diverse environment can be a hassle, and PIRL's solution is to centralize the queue management at a single point: the PIRLprinters system. (LPL Central Computing Systems [LCS] maintains a similar centralized server.)

When one submits a job for printing at PIRL, the file is transmitted to PIRLprinters, where it is then added to the appropriate queue and transmitted to the appropriate printer. In some cases, the job is simply forwarded on to another server (e.g., the LCS print server) where the same process takes place. These processes are illustrated below:

Occasionally, the print server gets out of sync with the printer -- one might find the queue claiming all is well, while an inspection of the printer's status panel indicates the opposite. In such a case, contact the PIRL support staff at sys@pirlmail.lpl.arizona.edu for assistance.