APPLICATION BRIEF PRINTING

Transcription

1 APPLICATION BRIEF PRINTING The Jonas Management System integrates well with Microsoft Windows printing functions. The Jonas system now offers the opportunity to modify the look of the reports through the use of Printer Styles. Managers are more receptive to the computer-generated reports as they don t appear to be just computer output anymore. This is another step by Jonas in making the system user friendly. Additional proportional font capability is a continuing process. Remember that only reports that are printed using graphic user interface (GUI) printers will be able to use the different fonts and features. Statements, invoices or other forms will not be affected by proportional font printing. Copyright 2005 Gary Jonas Computing.Ltd. Jonas clients are authorized and encouraged to make copies of materials in the Application Brief in whole or in part, without changes, for their own use and for internal training purposes only. The reproduction of any part of this brief for any other purpose is strictly prohibited.

2 PRINTING TABLE OF CONTENTS TOPIC PAGE Overview... 1 Setup... 2 Windows... 2 Jonas... 4 Printer Styles... 5 Pref s (Button)... 8 GUI Preferences:... 8 Operations Printer Dialog Window APPENDIX A - Non-Proportional Font Types Sample APPENDIX B - Proportional Font Types Sample APPENDIX B - Proportional Font Types Sample... 19

3 JONAS PRINTING Overview Printing is one of the most important aspects to running an application like Jonas. Audit trails, statements, invoices, checks, and reports are the heart of any accounting program. The ability to display and export data generated within Jonas to its users and consumers of information is of vital importance to the operation of any business. Most users are more concerned with how information appears, and its accuracy, than they are of the methodology used to get the information into the application. The Jonas Software package s ease of use in inputting data into the program is matched by the ease with which it can be output in a variety of forms. Printing in Jonas consists of two phases, Setup and Operations. In this Brief we shall go through each of these phases in turn. Setup is usually done initially, and rarely changes (usually when hardware is changed) during operation. Operationally, the Where Would You Like It Printed? dialogue box displayed above is encountered many times each day. Version 11 Printing - 1 -

4 Setup Windows Microsoft Windows Printer Setup The Jonas System uses the printers that are setup in the Printer Settings from your Microsoft Windows operating system. For information on setting up printers in Windows, refer to your Windows Help guide or manual. Before Jonas can print to a printer, Windows must have the ability to print to it. Use the Windows Test Page to test that the printer can receive data. Local Printers Local printers can be physically attached to workstations by using parallel ports (LPT), serial ports (COM), or USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports. To work smoothly with Jonas, we recommend that ECP printing be disabled on any LPT ports that you plan to use with Jonas. For information about disabling ECP printing, contact your hardware/network support company. Jonas recommends that the Windows printer s Spool settings be set to Spool print jobs so program finishes printing faster and Start printing after last page is spooled and Spool data format RAW. Select Disable bi-directional support for this printer (if not already disabled). This allows for a quicker response time in Jonas, since it has handed over responsibility to Windows to send the print job to the printer at a rate that the printer can handle. Note: Printers that are attached to workstations via USB will only be able to print using GUI Printer Styles. Text Printer Styles attempt to check the port they are attached to by opening the port and USB ports can t be opened in this manner, so nothing will print out. Print Server Due to the extra chatter broadcast over your network that it causes, Jonas recommends disabling file and printer sharing on local printers attached to workstations. If a printer resource must be shared, Jonas strongly recommends the use of print servers. A print server is a dedicated workstation or device that is solely devoted to managing print jobs. Printers are physically attached to the print server so they can be shared with all the other workstations. Version 11 Printing - 2 -

5 Printing with a print server provides the following advantages: The print server manages the printer driver settings. A single print queue appears on every computer connected to the printer, letting each user see where his or her print job is in relation to others waiting to print. Everyone knows the true state of the printer, because Operating System error messages appear on all computers. Some processing is passed from the workstation to the print server. You can have a single log for administrators wanting to audit printer events. Contact your hardware/network support company for more information about the variety of print servers available. Printer Drivers When selecting / installing Windows printer drivers, Jonas recommends using the most common denominator driver. For example, for HP4000 and HP4050 printers, we recommend using the PCL 5e drivers; for thermal chit or dot matrix printers, we suggest using Windows Generic / Text Only driver. Jonas maintains its own stable of printer drivers within the program for TEXT style printing these are built around Hewlett Packard (HP) for laser printers, Epson, and IBM dot matrix printers. Using a printer that isn t one of these types or can t emulate one of these types may result in problems with alignment, appearance, or functionality. Before purchasing any new printers, consult with your Jonas Sales Team Authorized Representative or Gary Jonas Computing. For additional information, please refer to the Jonas Network / Hardware documentation. To see a list of Jonas drivers and the printers they were written for, see the Jonas Note Printers Supported for more information. Inkjet / Bubblejet Note: Jonas does not officially support inkjet or bubblejet type printers from any manufacturer they aren t true laser printers, nor are they dot matrix. Consequently, we have adopted a use at your own risk policy they may or may not work. Version 11 Printing - 3 -

6 Jonas Jonas Printer Setup After you have setup within Microsoft Windows which printers you would like to print to, start Jonas. Jonas will read in your list of Windows printers and their settings as it starts consequently, it is not recommended to add or change printer settings in Windows while continuing to run Jonas. To have the changes take effect, exit Jonas and start it again from the shortcut on the Windows Desktop. Proceed to Printer Styles (found in System Administration > System Setup > Printer Styles): Version 11 Printing - 4 -

7 Printer Styles Factory Defined Printer Styles This program establishes the various printer styles in Jonas. Jonas comes with several factory printer styles already defined. These include ASCII (text file), FAX (send reports via Fax Card), J-MAIL ( ing), LASER (TEXT), LASERG (GUI), LOTUS (PRN text file), MS-DOS (ASCII text file), NARROW (TEXT), VIEW (view to screen), WIDE (TEXT), and WORD-M (another PRN text file). If you need to adjust the way these factory styles print or appear, then you should define your own styles using this menu item. Printer Style Enter up to a six-character code to represent the printer style. Do not use any special characters (e.g.!@#$%^&*()_-=+\?/ <>`~{[}]:; ) in the printer style code Jonas has found that the ability to archive POS chits is affected by the presence of these sorts of characters, so we disallow their use. Type of Printer Choose the type of printer. Laser printers will be LASER Standard Laser Printer, Dot Matrix ones should be PRON IBM Proprinter (Narrow Carriage). Version 11 Printing - 5 -

8 Text and GUI Types Device Type Check the radio button appropriate to the desired style. Users should only really have to choose between TEXT and GUI types. The differences between each type is explained below: File is used for printing electronically to a file created and stored on your hard drive. File is used with the ASCII, MS-DOS, and LOTUS printer styles. GUI stands for (Graphic User Interface) and is used for most printing in Jonas. With a GUI printer, Jonas sends an image of the whole page at once to the printer and tells it to draw it. GUI printers tend to line up better and are therefore ideal for printing checks. GUI styles also permit multiple fonts and stylized reports. Text is used for statements, labels, POS chits, and some reports from Jonas. With a text printer, Jonas sends information to be printed one line at a time. Dot matrix printers operate this way and should be set as TEXT device types. View is used by the system for viewing output to the screen instead of the printer. Fax is used when defining a fax printer style. A printer style called FAX is shipped with the system, but is no longer used. If you have installed a client/server fax system (like FaxMaker or WinFax), setup a new code to link to the fax client software (e.g. FAXM or WINFAX). J-Mail is the Jonas printer style. Please see the Application Brief on J-Mail for more information on configuring this purchasable module. ODBC stands for Open Data Base Connectivity and is used with files to export information to another ODBC compliant application. See the Jonas Note Exporting to ODBC for more information in setting it up. BulkJM is used for sending bulk (mass) J-Mails. See the J-Mail Application Brief, Personalized Letters section for more information on configuring and using this Printer Style type. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language is used in areas of Jonas like Silent Partner and Generate Files for Internet Inquiry System (Club) to create XML files for use on websites. Link File Name This is the location of the data file that stores the settings of each printer style. It is usually located on the server s J:\GJCWIN\DATA folder. Device/File Name Leave this field blank to allow the user to select from the Windows list of available printers when printing. Shared printers that are dedicated to one purpose (like Work Order Ticket printers, POS chit and preparation printers) are situations that require tying a Windows printer name to a particular style. Doing this will not stop the flow of processing to prompt the operator to select a printer it will just go by itself to the printer style it has been hard-coded to go to. To tie this style to a specific printer, click on the printer icon to the left of the field and browse the list of Windows printers, and choose the desired Windows printer. Version 11 Printing - 6 -

9 Note: The name of this printer in Windows must be identical on all workstations if you use this method, otherwise one terminal will print fine, but the others will get a Printer Not Responding message when they try to use it. Device Driver This will be chosen for you if the device type is GUI. If you chose Text, you will have to pick a device driver. Epson thermal printers usually use POS_EPSN.T80 and Epson Prep printers usually use POS_EPSN.TY3. Dot matrix printers either use STD_PRTR, STD_PRTR.IBM or STD_PRTR.EPS. These settings may vary with your particular printer see the General FAQ document for a list of device drivers and the models of printers they were designed for. Location ID This field is normally not utilized by users of the Jonas system, but can be used to restrict the number of printer styles that appear to certain users in multiple locations. If you set a single character code here and in the User Preferences (Administration > Indicate User Preferences), then only those printer styles that share the same code will be visible to the user. Suppress Form Feed As a default, this flag should not be checked. Some Windows printer drivers want to send a form feed after each page, which means you could end up with a blank page after each page of a report. This flag will sometimes prevent this from happening by telling Windows not to send the form feed. A bit of experimentation for your unique circumstances may be required here. Restrict Field Restrict To/From These fields are mutually exclusive. They allow you to stipulate which terminals in Jonas will see this printer style in their list of available styles, when they print from Jonas. The Restrict To field should be used in those circumstances where only a few workstations print to a particular style (e.g. only two or three POS stations print to a particular prep printer in the kitchen; or you have office terminals A1, A2 and A3 can all be printing on the office printer HP4-T. If this were the case, enter A1, A2, and A3 in the Restrict To field. This tells Jonas that only these three terminals will see the HP4-T printer styles). The Restrict From field is used normally when you have a number of workstations printing to a printer, but only a few that do not. It is simply easier to enter the Terminal ID s of the ones that cannot print to it, rather than the ones that can. For example, if everyone but the General Manager can print to printer style LASER, leave the Restrict To field blank and fill in GM in the Restrict From field. This will ensure that Terminal GM won t see the style LASER on their list of available printer styles. Barcode Program For Club users only. This is preset by Jonas and should not be changed without checking with Jonas Support first. Version 11 Printing - 7 -

10 Pref s (Button) GUI or Text Preferences Depending on whether you are setting up a GUI or Text type printer, this button will bring up different information. It is strongly recommended that if you are adjusting any settings, you setup a new printer style, so that the standard styles aren t affected. Your choice of proportional fonts may not be anyone else s taste! GUI Preferences: Proportional Fonts With a GUI printer style you can change the fonts for the headings, labels, body, etc. of reports you print from Jonas as well as bold, underline, italics, etc. The Title Block is the part of a report that prints the Company code and name. Sub-Headings are found within the body of a report, breaking the report up into sections. The Trailer is the portion of the report at the bottom of the page that indicates the date and time when the report was run, the Jonas Form design or program, the User ID, and the Terminal ID. See Appendix A and B for examples of non-proportional and proportional font printouts. Version 11 Printing - 8 -

11 Text Options: Font Name Click the down arrow to the right of the field and choose the appropriate font for this option. The list of installed Windows fonts on this workstation is displayed. If a workstation does not have the selected font installed, the system will revert to the Windows default of Courier New. B, U, I Check these if you would like this option to print in Bold, Underline or Italics. Check any box under the B column to convert the text printed into bold type. Check any box under the U column to Underline the specific text. Check any box under the I column to italicize the specific text. You may click one, two, or all three boxes, to customize the appearance of your Jonas printout. If you wish horizontal gridlines in the main body, check the underline box (useful for wide, multi-column reports). Fgd & Bgd Click on the magnifying glass to choose the foreground (Fgd) and background (Bgd) colors for the option. Changing the colors may or may not have any effect, depending on your printer model. Jonas recommends that you leave the colors to 0 and 7 (foreground text black, background white). Margin Settings Top, Bottom, Left, Right Only the Top and Left margins settings can be changed by the user. The numbers don t correspond to any actual units of measure (i.e. inches, mm, pica) so some experimentation will be necessary to achieve the desired results. Other Options Maximum Allowable Characters This number dictates how many characters can print across the page. If the report you try to print has more than this number of characters it will not display this printer style as being available to print to for that report. The upper limit is usually 260 characters. Default Mode This is normally left at Portrait. If Portrait, Switch to Landscape at This tells the system that, if the report you are trying to print has more characters than the number displayed here, then the report will automatically switch and print in landscape mode. Usually, this occurs at 133 characters reports narrower than that will print portrait, in compressed print. Version 11 Printing - 9 -

12 Printed Image Picture on Printout This field allows the user to have an image printed on everything that this printer style prints. Use the folder button to search for the name of the image file desired. Normally, these are bitmap type files (*.BMP). To work properly, they must be located on the server within the \GJCWIN\DATA folder. Picture Option This field controls how the image is to be treated on the page. The default is 2 Scale to Fit that ensures that the image is scaled up or down to fit the coordinate box specified in the next fields below. Other options are 0 Align Top Left and 1 Center/Crop. Co-Ords: X1, Y1, X2, Y2 These fields define the position of the box that the image will appear on the page. X1 & Y1 are the coordinates for the top left corner of the box. X2 & Y2 are the co-ordinates for the bottom right corner of the box. Text Preferences Device Name This field is no longer used. Paper Width (char): - at 10 CPI, -in Compressed Use these two fields to set the maximum number of characters wide at 10 characters per inch (normal font) and in compressed font these are normally left at 80 and 260. Version 11 Printing

13 Form Length (lines): - at 6LPI, - in Compressed These fields are used to define how long the page is at 6 lines per inch (normal font) and in compressed font these are normally left at 62 and 62. They may need some adjustment if you are setting up a style for Club Member statements. Continuous feed printers, like chit or preparation printers should set this to 999. If Laser Switch to Landscape at This tells the system that if the report you are trying to print has more characters than the number displayed here, then the report will automatically switch and print in landscape mode. Usually this occurs at 133 characters reports narrower than that will print portrait in compressed print. Of course, if you are using a dot matrix printer, it can t support landscape printing at all, so this should be set to 0 in that case. Open Drawer If the printer has a Cash Drawer attached to it, you can optionally enter the Decimal Escape code to activate it (if the device driver you chose on the main screen is not working to open the Cash Drawer). See your Cash Drawer manual for the Escape codes suitable for your model of Drawer. See the Jonas Note "Cash Drawers" for more information. This field is also used for vertical alignment for Barcode Labels. Enter a number to push the print down the page. Cut Paper If the printer has a Paper Cutter that is not working with the device driver selected on the previous screen, you can optionally enter the Decimal Escape code sequence to activate the Paper Cutter. See your printer manual for more information on which Escape codes will work. See also the Jonas Note "Paper Auto-Cutters" for more information. This is also used for horizontal alignment of Barcode Labels. Enter 30 to move the print 25mm to the right (5 offset, plus 25). Test (Button) Clicking this button will cause a test page to be sent by Jonas to the printer. If the test did not print, go to Windows Printers and try a test page from there. If you do not get anything from the Windows test page, then it means that the printer is not setup properly in Windows. Call your hardware/network support company to get the printer printing from Windows before attempting to print again from Jonas. Version 11 Printing

14 Operations Printer Dialog Window Where Would You Like It Printed? Anytime you want to view, print, send , or create a file for export you will see this printer dialogue box: Where Would You Like It Printed? We shall go through each of the available options in turn. View This button allows you to display your results on the screen. Once it prints to the screen, you can use the scroll bars on the sides to move around if it s a large printout. If you then decide you wish to print, click on the printer icon on the tool bar to bring up another Where Would You Like It Printed? dialogue box and choose the appropriate printer. Version 11 Printing

15 Smart Viewer This feature allows you to export your results into other third-party applications like Excel, Access, Acrobat, etc. directly. To use Smart Viewer to Acrobat, you must have the full feature version that allows you to create PDF files. If Smart Viewer doesn t work for you, check the settings of the MS-DOS Printer Style if there is any path indicated in the Device/File Name field, Smart Viewer would not work. Remove any reference to a path, leaving only MS-DOS.LST as the file name. Clicking on Smart Viewer will produce the next screen: The Smart Viewer Options screen allows you to make adjustments to the formatting before sending your printing to whatever application you choose. You can change the Report Font, Font Size, which application will be opened, whether you want the headings stripped off each page except the first page (useful for column alignment and less fiddling in applications like Excel), and the temporary file that is created when sending output to Smart Viewer. Clicking Proceed will cause the application to launch and read in the temporary file. Version 11 Printing

16 Advanced This button allows you to control the Windows printer properties more closely from within Jonas. This is especially important for those clients running Windows 2000 or XP who need to print to different trays on the same printer. In earlier versions of Windows, you could setup multiple printers that physically were the same, but had different properties this is now impossible in Windows 2000 or XP. Version 11 Printing

17 Print This button allows you to print to the Windows printer of your choice in conjunction with a Jonas printer style. The Style types shown are dependant upon what you are attempting to print most things can be printed to GUI styles, but if a Text based form is chosen, then only Text printer styles will be displayed. Restrictions from the setup of the printer styles in the Restrict To/From section also control the available list of printer styles. If the report is too wide, then the list of available styles is also adjusted to only display those that can handle the report width. If the printer style is tied to a specific Windows printer name, then selecting the printer style will fill in the associated Windows printer name in the Printer field. If there is no association, then the terminal s default Windows printer is displayed. Export File File This button allows you to create a file for export. It can be saved and imported into other third-party applications at a later date. Select the desired file style in the dropdown field beside the File button, and then click the button. If you choose LOTUS, then a dialogue box will pop-up after the document is created, advising you of the location where it was saved. This location is set in the System Parameters (System Administration > System Setup), but can be overridden in the Workstation Setup (System Administration > System Setup). The file created is named LOTUSxxx.PRN where xxx is a number that increments to one plus the previous file number in existence. For example, if a file LOTUS010.PRN already exists in the location where you are creating the files, then the next one created in that same location will be called LOTUS011.PRN. The LOTUS files are an ASCII text file quotation delimited, and comma separated (i.e. Field1, Field2, Field3 ). At the time of writing this note, certain popular Microsoft Office products will only allow you to import up to a maximum of 256 fields from an ASCII file. This poses a problem for some of our clients when they create an ASCII file from within Jonas that contains more than 256 fields. When imported into Excel, fields past 256 get truncated and a message within Excel displays this occurance. Microsoft has provided a potential workaround for this restriction that you may wish to try. It involves importing your ASCII file into Excel using a Microsoft-supplied procedure. Version 11 Printing

18 To view details regarding how to do this, please follow the instructions on the Microsoft web site Knowledge Base in article Q Read through the instructions provided. A tip: in Step 4, simply cut and paste the code, don't attempt to type it in! Disclaimer: Jonas has provided this note to our users for informational purposes only as a courtesy to our valued clients. Please use this information at your own risk and discretion. Please be aware that once data has been exported 'out of Jonas', that your support contract does not cover help related to utilising the export file in a Third Party product. If you choose MS-DOS, then an ASCII text file is created called MS-DOS.LST. There is no notification about the location of this file when it has finished printing to it. It is always located in the folder from which Jonas started up in (the Start in: folder from the properties of your Jonas shortcut on your Windows Desktop). The MS-DOS.LST file is always overridden each time you print to it, unless it is copied and saved under another name. Its use is mostly limited to Jonas Support. Version 11 Printing

19 If you choose WORD-M, then an ASCII text merge file is created and a dialogue box will pop-up after the document is created, advising you of the location where it was saved. This location is the same as that specified for the LOTUS style above. The file name is WPMRGxxx where the xxx is the same sort of incremental number as the LOTUS style above. This file can then be imported into Word or WordPerfect as a mail merge source file. We have deliberately left the report headings in to help you identify the file. You can either delete them in the source file or remove them from the letters after you have created them. J-Mail This button allows you to certain reports. Please see the Application Brief on J-Mail for more information on setting up and using J-Mail. Fax This button allows you to fax certain reports using your third-party fax software. Faxing is supported using FaxMaker or WinFax. Please see the Jonas Note Faxing Using WinFax for more specific instructions regarding WinFax setups. No. of Copies This field allows you create multiple copies when running reports, some invoice designs, etc. Certain forms like checks will not be offered this ability when printing. If this is the case, the field will be disabled. Version 11 Printing

20 APPENDIX A - Non-Proportional Font Types Sample Version 11 Printing

21 APPENDIX B - Proportional Font Types Sample Version 11 Printing

22 The author of this Application Brief is Richard Marhue. This Application Brief was last reviewed and edited by Jeff Slaven. Version 11 Printing

23 PRINTING TRAINING GUIDE Overview... 1 Setup... 2 Microsoft Windows Printer Setup... 2 Local Printers... 2 Print Server... 2 Printer Drivers... 3 Inkjet / Bubblejet... 3 Jonas Printer Setup... 4 Factory Defined Printer Styles... 5 Text and GUI Types... 6 Restrict Field... 7 GUI or Text Preferences... 8 Proportional Fonts... 8 Margin Settings... 9 Printed Image Text Preferences Operations Where Would You Like It Printed? Export File APPENDIX A - Non-Proportional Font Types Sample Participant Date Initials Printing - 1 -

24 PRINTING TRAINING GUIDE APPENDIX B - Proportional Font Types Sample APPENDIX B - Proportional Font Types Sample Participant Date Initials Printing - 2 -

25 Printing Notes: Version 11 Printing - 3 -