Overview of Printer Operation

Each printer defined for use with mvBase has its own process and port and is independently displayed by using the WHERE command as soon as it is initialized. Printers typically sleep until they are assigned something to do. Once they have a print job to process, printers scan the assigned form queue(s), print any jobs, then return to the non-active mode awaiting further tasks.

At a given time, a printer may be in any one of the following four states:

UNDEFINED	Device is not currently defined as a printer.
READY	Printer is ready to receive and print jobs from its queue(s).
WORKING	Printer is printing a print job.
STOPPED	Printer is waiting for instructions.

When the printer scans the form queues, it looks for an available job to print. (An available job is one whose print mode matches a print mode supported by that printer). If the print modes do not match, the job will not be selected for print output. This permits specific output to select the printer it needs, but still allows one printer to handle several queues.