Updated December 2011; see History

ORIENTATION = LANDSCAPE

(Windows only, PASSTHROUGH must be off.) The page orientation (portrait or landscape) may be specified for Windows laser or graphics printers. The default is PORTRAIT.

The ORIENTATION statement overrides both the current printer default setting and any setting made by the user in the interactive printer selection/configuration dialog. It can only be overridden programmatically (by LANDSCAPE and NOLANDSCAPE switches in EZSPL Old Format). If you want to allow the user to have control over the orientation, omit the statement from the printer init file and don't specify either of the related switches in the spool request.

Note that paper orientation must be set at the time the printer context is initialized, so it cannot be set within the print file itself.

Also note, however, as explained in the Defining Spoolers topic, that printer init files are processed at the time reports are sent to the printer. This means that you can switch between landscape and portrait printing on a given printer, but you must have that printer identified twice to A-Shell: once as a portrait printer, once as a landscape printer. So when printing a landscape-oriented report, you would send the report to the printer called, for example, "HPland." When producing and printing portrait-oriented reports, they would be sent to the "HPport" printer. "HPland" and "HPport" are, of course, the same printer, which have only different (a) printer init file names, and (b) ORIENTATION = lines.

History

2011 December, A-Shell 6.0.1241:  Windows printing refinement: The orientation in the printer dialog is now initialized based on the specification in the printer init file or passed in the print request, rather than from the current printer settings. For related details and further explanation, see the A-Shell forum discussion "PROMPT: Printer Preferences not taking place."