PC Access for Windows Reference Guide

for PC Access for Windows 4.30.158

Add/Edit Printer window: Job Timeout

The Job Timeout field controls how PC Access interacts with the Windows Print Manager while printing host reports.

· Troubleshooting tip: if you use a Master System or Maestro System MLS, and you have a problem with disappearing or corrupted photos on multi-page host reports, you should try checking the Alternate Photo Clipping box on the Edit Printer window. In older versions of PC Access it was often necessary to set the Job Timeout to 0 (zero) seconds to correct such errors. However, with PC Access 4.30 and later versions this should no longer be necessary.

PC Access, like other Windows applications, prints via the Windows Print Manager. The Print Manager operates around the fundamental concept of a print job. When a Windows application is ready to print something, it sends a print job to the Print Manager.

A print job generally consists of one or more printed pages. Therefore a Windows application usually doesn't begin printing on your printer immediately when you give it a print command. The application must first accumulate internally all the output for a print job and then release it to the Print Manager. The Print Manager queues the job behind any waiting jobs, and eventually forwards the job to the appropriate printer.

This Print Manager behavior creates a potential problem for PC Access when you print host reports while you are online in the Terminal window. Many remote computer services do not send any commands to tell PC Access when a report starts or stops. Rather, they send a sequence of low-level print commands (such as to print a photo, print a line of text, and eject a page). The host does not tell PC Access how to group these low-level print commands into a print job. PC Access must decide on its own when it has received enough print commands from a host to release the current print job to the Print Manager.

The Job Timeout field lets you control how PC Access decides this. Enter a number of seconds in the field. When a host sends PC Access a command to eject the current page, PC Access waits for the number of seconds you specify.

· If no additional print command arrives from the host in that time, PC Access releases its current print job to the Print Manager. If the host sends another print command later, PC Access starts accumulating print commands into the next print job.

· If an additional print command does arrive from the host in that time, PC Access continues accumulating print commands into its current print job. When the current page ends, PC Access starts the timer again.

The value you enter in the Job Timeout field presents a trade-off between the time your report starts printing vs. the ability to print very long host reports:

· If you enter 0 (zero) seconds for your Job Timeout, PC Access will release a print job to the Print Manager for each page the host tells PC Access to print. This sends your printouts to your printer as quickly as possible. However, the Print Manager cannot simultaneously schedule more than 100 print jobs. That means if you try to print a very long report from your host (>100 pages), a Job Timeout of zero may cause you to lose some pages. The number of pages you lose depends partially on the speed of your printer. If your printer can print jobs as fast as PC Access releases them to the Print Manager, you should have no problem. However, some printers are too slow to keep up (such as color printers when you print color photos).

· If you enter 2 to 5 seconds for your Job Timeout, PC Access will accumulate several pages of output before releasing the current print job. This prevents PC Access from sending too many print jobs to the Print Manager, but your host reports will begin printing after a delay for PC Access to accumulate several pages. Some reports may not start printing until the host finishes sending all the data.

In summary: if you will never print more than 100 pages of host reports during an online session (or several consecutive sessions), you can specify 0 (zero) seconds for the shortest delay before printing. If you need to print very long host reports, you'll have to specify a Job Timeout greater than zero, usually between 2 and 5 seconds.

Setup item classification:

· Parent window: Add/Edit Printer

· Setup item type: Advanced

· Who specifies: You

· Importance: Optional

This topic has changed for PC Access 4.30.

Last modification date: Friday, January 17, 2003 00:58:49