Printer Trays - How to control input trays

Question

I have hit a wall and need your help. We have an application compiled for both a Lexmark Optra S 1650 and an HP4 Plus. The input tray to be used is dependent upon the printer selected. We are using JfDesign 5.5.
For the Lexmark, we need to select label stock from the tray physically labeled as "3". In the .ICS, this drawer is considered as tray "5" or "1005". Each attempt pulls from drawer one, compile option "Use printer tray numbers" unchecked. Attempts, ^job statement with: (1) -ati3; (2) -ati5 -atjoff; (3) compiling with non-portable tray #3; (4) compiling with non-portable tray #5 and use printer tray numbers checked.
Ideas?

Answer 1

I had a problem that was somewhat similar. We are using two printers that are definately different. Our print jobs can go to either one, interchangeably. We needed to be able to specify within Output Designer the specific tray that a particular page was to draw from and have the correct paper be used no matter which printer was printing the job. To complicate matters, Output Designer did not have ICS files for our specific printer models.
One printer has 6 input sources and the other 5. Which specific input tray contains a particular type of paper is different. More importantly, the PCL emulation in both of them require a different number in the PCL tray selection command to get the printer to draw from a specific tray. For example, for one printer (it happens to be a Lexmark 3455) the tray selection command for "label stock" uses a 1 in the command sequence (that happens to be tray one due to the paper path being the best for labels); the other printer (a Xerox DP65) requires a 6 in the command sequence to be able to draw from the tray that is defined as containing label stock (again that happensto be tray 6 which has a staight paper path - so as to reduce the chance of the labels peeling off while going around sharp curves).
After doing considerable study of the ICS files, I had to do two things: (1) Determine the PCL tray selection command number for each tray for each printer, and (2) through trial & error determine what value to use within the ICS file to produce the description that I wanted to see in the Format/Page/InputTray selection drop down list.
Once I had all that information figured out, it was simply a matter of changing the "Trays", "InputTray", and "DefaultTray" parameters within the ICS file. The important part is to know the "format" of the InputTray parameter. The first number is what produces the description for the InputTray selection drop down list. The second number is what is used for the tray selection command.
To determine the values I wanted for the description, I just started changing the numbers and checking to see what each different value resulted in. The number for the tray selection command came from the printers themselves - the Lexmark will print the command numbers on its setup page while the Xerox provides it via the keyboard & CRT menus.
When compiling forms we do not check the "Use printer tray numbers" box. When printing we don't use any tray control parameter (-ati, -atj) on the ^job statement. A print job might consist of a colored separator page, a letterhead page and several plain white pages. There is nothing within the DAT file to control the input tray; that was all defined within Output Designer.
We did discover a couple of quirks that we were able to resolve. First, if I set up Output Designer so that the Xerox printer is the "default" (and it is the one most often used) the tray selection wouldn't work properly; the solution turned out to be to set up Output Designer to use the Lexmark as the "default"; we just use the -z and -asp parameters on the ^job statement to specify the desired printer and driver. The second one occurred when I decided to make the MDF files smaller by deselecting fonts that we don't use. When I did this the tray selection stopped working. Through trial & error the solution turned out to be to select a specific font for one of the printers even though we don't use that font.
To demonstrate what I'm talking about, here is the section of the ICS files that I'm referring to.
LEXMARK.ICS
>; Auxilliary Paper control information
>Trays 5 ; 5 paper tray selections on printer
>; JetForm-Printer
>.
InputTray 7 0 ; Auto Select
InputTray 20 20 ; High Capacity
InputTray 201 1 ; Tray 1
InputTray 2 4 ; Tray 2
InputTray 3 5 ; Tray 3
InputTray 405 1 ; Label Stock
InputTray 8 2 ; Manual Feed
>DefaultTray 20 ; On a new form default to High Capacity
XEROX.ICS
>; Auxilliary Paper control information
>Trays 6 ; 6 paper tray selections on printer
; DP65 PCL Designations:
; 0=Auto Select
; 1=Standard
; 2=Manual paper
; 3=Manual Envelope
; 4=Lower
; 5=Large Capacity
; 6=Envelope
>; JetForm-Printer
>.
InputTray 7 0 ; Auto Select
InputTray 20 1 ; High Capacity
InputTray 201 2 ; Tray 1
InputTray 2 3 ; Tray 2
InputTray 3 4 ; Tray 3
InputTray 405 6 ; Label Stock
InputTray 8 5 ; Manual Feed
>DefaultTray 20 ; On a new form default to High Capacity
(the period/space in front of the first InputTray parameter isn't really there; it is a quirk of the posting system)