The print command (P) allows you to print an excerpt (from-to page) of the file. This much is obvious. What may not be obvious is where it gets the list of printers that you are allowed to select from. Since this was originally developed as part of EZ-SPOOL, it uses the EZ-SPOOL configuration file system for determining the names of the available printers. This system allows different sets of printers and other options to be associated with various situations, such as job name, program, account, etc.

One potential problem with printing excerpts from a file is that the file may have contained special printer control codes (typically at the start of the file) which are lost when only an excerpt of the file is printed. There is no simple and universal solution to this problem, and you will have to use a workaround approach appropriate to your situation. For example, once you realize that the file is 132 columns wide, you can select a printer whose default configuration is set for 132 column printing. (Refer to Printer Configuration for information on how you can create a logical printer that automatically starts in a particular configuration.) If your application handles printer control codes via the PREFIX and SUFFIX options in the Printer INI, rather than by embedding them in the file itself, this problem will be minimized. (All you need is enough sense to select the appropriate printer to handle the excerpt.) If you are using a terminal emulator such as ZTERM which offers a choice of printer font sizes for "local" printing, that may be another solution. (In that case, make sure to add a "Local" printer option which uses the "AUXLOC:" pseudo printer device, which in turn will route the printout back to your terminal or emulator for local printing.)

As of A-Shell version 4.7(808), another possibility for dealing with the printing difficulty just described is to use the SBR=EZPRTX parameter in miame.ini. In this case, whenever you print from within EZVUE, it will call the subroutine EZPRTX.SBX, passing it the desired page range parameters, and let it handle the print operation. The source to a generic EZPRTX.SBX is included in the release in DSK0:[7,376], with the idea that application developers can customize it to provide more sophisticated handling of partial file print requests. (For example, you can add code to deal with the printer feature codes, printer selection, etc.)