Chuck,

Well that is not an easy question.

It largely depends on what the printer wants to see in the postscript that you send it in order to select the 'correct' tray.

Sometimes one gets lucky and the printer does understand what XPP is sending it, sometimes you have to dig deeper.

You can start by using the tray control file that is delivered with your system: sheetfed

(you can copy it from ...\xz\distr\sys\od\ps_page\ to make sure that you have an unmodified version).

If you look into that file you see that there are some trays that XPP can choose from:

valid_paper_defines:
lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=2
a4tray 210m 297m tol=2
lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=10
ledgertray 17i 11i rdz=12q bdz=12q
a4tray 210m 297m
end_valid_paper_defines

The first word is what is send to the printer as the command to select the tray, so XPP will include 'lettertray' in the postscript if it wants to select a lettertray tray. (and maybe your printer will understand this or not).

Then this gets followed by the dimensions of that tray. So if the page is smaller than 8.5i by 11i, XPP will select the lettertray.

Which means that the order in which the trays appear is important.

Which also means that is you do nothing XPP will select the tray itself based on the dimension of the page you want to output.
(unless you use the -sel option)

Now you will also notice that the ledgertray that is mentioned in that file is set as 17i by 11i and that is not what you want.

Your first try could be to invert those dimension, remove the a4tray and remove the extra lettertray which is in the default file, so things would look like:

valid_paper_defines:
lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=2
ledgertray 11i 17i 
end_valid_paper_defines

If you are lucky things will work.
If not try the alternative name (also in the same file under OTHER TRAYS:

valid_paper_defines:
lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=2
11x17tray 11i 17i 
end_valid_paper_defines

Just give it a try with those 2 possibilities and let us know what is the result.

The journey could be a lot longer...

(you will notice that in this same sheetfed file there is an example on how to select a tray based on the number of the tray in the printer.)

PS: in order to make sure that XPP is selecting the correct tray for the job you are outputting, print to a PS file and check that you actually the selected tray sitting in that file (just search for the word ledgertray or 11x17tray.

Good luck.

You will need it ... you might want to get hold of a rabbit foot before you venture into this

Thanks Bart. I already tried the XPP 11x17tray thing and that's what didn't work. So I put the option in the lp command using a printer driver option "-o media=tabloid". However, someone else's media name may not be "tabloid" so I included instructions about how to use the unix command "lpoptions" to find the media names. Here are my steps.

Print on 11x17 paper via XPP 8.4 on Unix.

Goal: Create a new XPP printer that just prints on 11x17 paper.

Find your UNIX printer name that you want XPP to print on 11x17 paper. Write it here: ___________

1. You will create a text file which contain the settings for the unix printer you want to print 11x17 on. Go to your home directory in XPP unix. Let's assume your unix printer name is 'comp_color'.
2. Now let's get the options and paper sizes for your printer. Type at the unix command line: lpoptions -l comp_color > comp_color_options.txt
3. Open the new file you created 'comp_color_options.txt' with a text editor. DO NOT use a word processor.
4. In this file, look for a line that starts with "Page Size" or "Media Size" or both. My line looks like this: "PageSize/Media Size: A3 A4 A5 A6 B4 B5 ISOB5 B6 OficioII Folio Statement P8K P16K OficioMX P12X18 *Letter Legal Executive Tabloid EnvPersonal Env9 Env10 EnvMonarch EnvDL EnvC5 EnvC4 Custom".
5. This lines tells you the name of all media sizes the Unix printer driver recognizes, so for 11x17 paper use the Unix paper size of 'tabloid'. If 'tabloid' is not listed, look for one called '11x17'.
6. Go to Xyadmin, open the printer config tool.
7. Copy your old XPP 8.5x11 printer name, to a new XPP printer name. Make sure that '11x17' is in the XPP printer name so people know what it's used for. You only have 8 characters in the XPP printer name field.
8. We will add an option to the lp command. Append to the "Default prtopts" this string: -o media=tabloid (or whatever media name you got from the file created with lpoptions).
9. The new "Default Prtopts" should look like this: lp -d comp_color -o nobanner -o media=tabloid.
10. Save the printer config settings in XPP and exit the printer config window.

Testing

1. Go to a division to print. You do not have to open it, but select the division.
2. Open the XPP print dialog.
3. In the XPP print dialog, change the printer to your new printer name for 11x17 paper.
4. On the print dialog Page tab, print only page 1. To print sluglines make sure "Page Header", "Path", and "Checksum" are all checked.
5. On the Trays tab change "Tray Control File" to "elevenseven", or whatever your tray control file is that contains 11x17 trays. Tray control files in the Grand Rapids system are in /export/home/xyvision/xz/sys/od/ps_page/.
6. Change "Select tray" to an 11x17 tray name in the tray control file "elevenseven". Our tray is "11x17tray".
7. In the print dialog, Command tab make sure this is in there to print at 100%: -delspool -S 100 -hoff 20 -voff 30.
8. Click Run to print it. It should have printed on 11x17 paper with a slugline.
9. If not, check your settings for the XPP printer and tray control file.

Chuck,

From what I see above it looks like for your printer the name of the tray is "tabloid"

So the following entries in your tray control file should make this work in a more XPP like way.

The prime advantage of using a tray control file over differently named printers is that XPP will pick the correct tray for you.

So how about trying:

valid_paper_defines:
lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=2
tabloid 11i 17i  
end_valid_paper_defines

Oh and I forgot to tell you that there is a tray.ps file that if you send it to the printer it will print a page with the known tray names.

You can find this file in the ..\xz\distr\sys\od\ folder.

Thanks Mark. Where is tray.ps located on the XPP system? I can just use the "lp" command to send a ps file directly to the printer, right?

Keep in mind we have multiple printers on our XPP system. We always have at least 2 active printers in XPP.

Ah, I missed Bart's second message, thus I have some confusion. It appears /export/home/xyvision/sz/distr/sys/od/trays.ps is the same as /export/home/xyvision/xz/sys/od/trays.ps.

Wait, in my tray file the "tabloid" must come from the output of the lpoptions command? "Tabloid" is the name of the tray as my printer hardware calls it?

Right now in my special Kyocera XPP tray file:

valid_paper_defines:

tabloid 11i 17i

ledgertray 17i 11i

end_valid_paper_defines

In my Xyadmin Printer Config screen for the XPP printer "kpo11x17", the Default prtopts:

lp -d comp_color -o nobanner -o media=tabloid

Am I understanding this correctly? I guess I'm a more visual learner.

See my previous post....

or...  look in the ..\xz\distr\sys\od\  folder [:)]

Hi Chuck,

Your /export/home/xyvision/xz/sys/od/trays.ps file is "customizable" and the XPP delivered file would be the /export/home/xyvision/xz/distr/sys/od/trays.ps file. On an initial "install" (versus upgrade) the distr file is copied to the "live" directory. They will be the same if you never made any custom changes to it.

If you have multiple printers, then you would certainly have an entry for each printer in your Printer Configuration (_pmf_config.sde spec).

And you could have separate entries in your Printer Configuration spec for different paper sizes, where you specify the exact paper size desired for a particular printer in the lp command options.

However, what Bart (and Mark) are saying is that the advantage in using the XPP tray control file to determine which paper size is used (if you can get it to work) is that you only need to have one entry for each printer in the Printer Configuration and so when you print you only need to select which printer you want (and not also the paper size you desire).

If you can get the XPP tray control file set up correctly to do it's thing then you should be able to leave it up to XPP to determine and specify the correct paper size (tray) that the printer should use.

Otherwise you can end up with a whole array of entries in your Printer Configuration where you have a separate entry for every printer and different paper size used on each printer.

You said that you had this in your special Kyocera XPP tray file:

valid_paper_defines:

tabloid 11i 17i

ledgertray 17i 11i

end_valid_paper_defines

I wonder why you have two definitions in your tray control file for the 11i x 17i paper size (only different by rotation)?

I worry that XPP might be selecting the "ledgertray" definition (the algorithm for which one gets used is "tricky" when two definitions are the "same") and putting that in the output file and that's not one of the valid "tray" names for your printer.

Also, I'm not sure if these "tray" names are case-sensitive or not, as your 'lpoptions' command output "Tabloid" and not "tabloid" - but it seems like everyone thinks that is not a factor as no one else pointed that out.

I'm sure that I'm stating the obvious, but did you make sure that when trying to use your tray control file that your print selections in PathFinder were specifying your tray control file on the Trays file?

In any case, I would think that you should be able to get a tray control file properly set up to work with your printers and be able to have XPP select the correct paper size to use. At least it seems that Bart and Mark (and many other customers) have had success in getting it to work.

I would think you would want at least one definition in your tray control file for each different paper size that you might ever use with XPP and your printer(s), for example:

valid_paper_defines:

tabloid 11i 17i

letter 8.5i 11i

end_valid_paper_defines

and maybe even something like this:

valid_paper_defines:

tabloid 11i 17i tol=2

letter 8.5i 11i tol=2

end_valid_paper_defines

Typically tray control entries specify tolerance values as well (e.g. tol=#) and sometimes dead zone values (e.g. rdz=#). You would need to find out if your printer has dead zone values and they can sometimes vary by tray/paper size (and can be different values on the four sides). All of those in addition to the actual paper size are used in the algorithm used by XPP to select a "tray".

If entries for a particular paper size are repeated in the tray control file, typically the earlier entries (for a page size) have higher tolerance values and the later entries have lower or no tolerance values.

The contents of your particular tray control file all really depend on what are the full set of paper sizes you are trying to incorporate, and how close in size to each other the different paper sizes are, and how far or near to those sizes are the defined page sizes being used in your XPP documents. For example if you need to handle both letter (8.5i x 11i) and A4 (8.27i x 11.69i) paper, it gets trickier because they are pretty close in size.

Customer support can also assist in helping with your tray control file, as long as you provide all the correct tray names (paper sizes) that you want to use with XPP as well as all the dead zone values of each tray and even all the possible page sizes (page layouts) you might be using in JOBs if there are any unusual ones.

BTW, for everyone's edification there is a whole chapter on Tray Control Files in Chapter 6 of the Managing XPP manual (manxpp.pdf). It goes into all the details and describes a number of helper PS files (e.g. trays.ps and prconfig.ps) that can be used with printers to help set up tray control files.

Remember that the latest versions of all the XPP documentation for all "current" releases (currently XPP 8.4, 9.0, and 9.1) is always available at http://docs.sdl.com for perusing or downloading.