Re: LYNX-DEV Printing from dumb terminals

[Al Gilman]

  From: OPLIN Webmaster <address@hidden>

  We've installed Lynx on a web server for use by Ohio public libraries. 
  Many of these libraries (obviously) are using dumb terminals to connect. 
  The system administrator says there is no way to enable printing to a 
  printer attached to one of these dumb terminals. That Lynx's 
  understanding of print to attached printer would be a printer attached 
  to the web server.
  
  Is this correct? Is there any way to configure Lynx on the server end to 
  assist in printing at a dumb terminal?
  
Rest assured; you are right; they are wrong.

Nobody these days would hire anybody as a system administrator
who is old enough to remember the world for which Lynx was
designed.

The lpansi program distributed as a helper for Lynx is intended
to do exactly what you are looking for: treat a printer attached
at the user's terminal as the printer to which a print file is
disposed.  There are scripts for Unix and for VMS that are
distributed by the Kermit organization for use with the
pass-through-to-printer function incorporated in the Kermit
terminal-emulation which perform a similar function.

Questions remain, however.

1.  Lynx most naturally interfaces with a VT-100 or upward-compatible
terminal or terminal emulation.  You need to survey the terminals
that are actually being used.  How many of them enable passing a 
file through to an attached printer by the ANSI standard escape
sequences that a VT-100 uses?  If your userbase has a large subset
that can perform this function the same way a VT-100 would, that is
the place to start.  In any case, survey the terminal population that
you have to serve, find out what their capabilities are in terms
of supporting a terminal-attached printer, and see what dialog is
required to access the capability which the terminals provide.

2.  Lynx will work with any of these.  The adaptation to handle
weirder and weirder incarnations is external to Lynx itself and
is in the virtual-printer script or program that you must borrow,
build or adapt, and then install as one of Lynx's printer
options.  Lynx will let you do weird and wondrous things through
the downloader, viewer and printer definitions.  For example, you
can install sz as a printer option for a print-to-pc-file
versions.

3.  If in fact you have a significant number of users whose "dumb
terminals" are _actually_ PCs running Kermit, you might want to
bring up the service using the Kermit-distributed script at your
host site and the attached-printer emulation in Kermit as a first
step.  Once you have that working, you could progress to shake down
other VT-100 emulations and eventually add adapted scripts if need
be for terminal types which are not VT-100 conformant but still
support a terminal-attached printer.

Good Luck!

Al Gilman
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