Overview of Using the Printer Support CLISTs

The TSO/E printer support service provides a standard interface between application programs and printers. With printer support, your interactive print applications do not have to be programmed to access specific printers. Instead, applications can invoke printer selection CLIST ICQCPC00 to display lists of printers for users to select. ICQCPC00 can display printers for selection based on their location, print format, and printer type.

Printer support also lets print applications be independent of the print routines that actually print the output. The application or ICQCPC00 can invoke print functions such as CLISTs ICQCPC10 and ICQCPC15 to print a data set on a selected printer.

Figure 1 shows the interaction between an application program and the printer support service.

Figure 1. Overview of Printer Support Processing

The following are some examples of the processing that applications can perform using CLISTs ICQCPC00, ICQCPC10 and ICQCPC15. Each example includes an outline of the tasks involved. For more details on how to perform the tasks, read the sections immediately following this overview.

Using the printer support CLISTs, an application can:

Prompt the user for a printer location; display a list of printers at that location; when the user selects a printer, display a list of fonts available for the printer; when the user selects fonts, perform printing immediately.
Tasks involved:
- Define printers and their characteristics using the print definition dialog of the Information Center Facility. (See z/OS TSO/E Administration.)
- From the application (a text processing program, for example) call CLIST ICQCPC00 with the following:
  - The subset of printers to be displayed (by printer location, format, and/or type). Your application can prompt the user for a location, then invoke ICQCPC00 to display printer types and formats available at that location.
  - The font selection panel to be displayed. (The administrators who define the printers can provide a choice of fonts for each print definition.)
  - The PRINT option. Data will be printed immediately using the print function (CLIST, command, or program) that the administrator may have specified when defining the selected printer. This print function could be ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15.
Allow a user to select a printer and fonts from the displayed list; perform some kind of processing, such as formatting; verify the formatting with the user; then print the data if the user approves it.
Tasks involved:
- Define printers as described in z/OS TSO/E Administration.
- Call ICQCPC00 as described in example 1 above, leaving out the PRINT option.
- When the user selects the printer and fonts, the application can do other processing, such as text formatting with the selected fonts, and present the formatting to the user for verification.
- After the user verifies the formatting, your application can call the print function explicitly. To send the data to the printer selected by the user, invoke ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15 with the name of the data set to be printed. To override the selected printer:
  - You can send the data to another defined printer by invoking ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15 with the parameters PLOC and PFORM, which identify the print definition. You can override the printer's defined print characteristics by specifying them on the call to ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15.
  - You can send data to an undefined printer by invoking ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15 with the NOTABLE parameter and supplying print characteristics on the CLIST invocation.
Save the selected printer so it becomes a default printer; thereafter, instead of displaying a list of printers, direct the data to the default printer.
Tasks involved:
- Perform processing as in example 2 above. When the user selects a printer, your application can save the information in shared variables in the user profile.
- Later, when your application is used again, it can call ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15 to print the data to the default location.
  - To verify that the default print definition still exists, invoke ICQCPC00, specifying the parameters PLOC, PFORM, VERIFY, and PRINT. If the printer or character set is unavailable (has been deleted) your application will receive a return code to that effect.
  - To print without verifying the definition, invoke ICQCPC10 or ICQCPC15 with the parameters PLOC and PFORM only.