The Xerox 9700 Electronic Printing System is a high-speed page printer that produces high-quality output on one or two sides of standard 8.5 by 11-inch paper. The Xerox 9700 operates using a Xerographic process. In this respect, it is much like a large office copier, but instead of requiring an original document whose image is optically projected into the reproduction mechanism, the page printer uses a laser to create the image to be printed from data transmitted by MTS. The page printer prints at a rate of up to two images per second, which is more than ten times the speed of our fastest line printer.
Pages, Images, and Sheets
On line-printer output, there is no need to distinguish between pages, images, and sheets, since each sheet of paper contains one image of one page. However, on the page printer this relationship is more flexible.
A page is a logical quantity. A new page is started either when the appropriate carriage control appears (such as a “1” in column one, which causes a new logical page to be started), or when the number of lines per page is exceeded, so that text overflows onto a new page. An image is what gets printed on one side of a sheet of paper, and a sheet (of paper) is a physical quantity. An image may contain more than one page, for example when printing in two-up or four-up configuration.
In the normal (default) manner of printing for the page printer, one page is placed on one image, and two images are placed on each sheet (one on each side). Pages also may be printed “two-up” and/or
“two-sided”. When printing “two-up”, two pages are placed on each image, one above the other.
When printing “two-sided”, two images are printed on each sheet. Thus, when printing “two-up” and
“two-sided”, four pages can be printed on each physical sheet of paper.
Page Orientation
The page printer can print text in many formats and fonts, but the major variation is between
“landscape” and “portrait” orientation of the paper. These terms indicate the direction in which text lines lie on the paper. In landscape orientation (the way most landscapes are painted), the lines of text lie parallel to the long edge of the paper:
┌────────────────────────┐
Landscape Orientation
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
└────────────────────────┘
In portrait orientation (the way most portraits are painted), the lines of text are parallel to the short side of the paper:
┌───────────────┐
Portrait Orientation
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
└───────────────┘
Delivery of Page-Printer Output
Users can request delivery of page-printer output to the batch stations at NUBS, UNYN, Dearborn, and Flint by specifying the DELIVERY keyword on the SIGNON command for batch jobs, e.g.,
SIGNON userid DELIVERY=NUBS
or similarly on the CONTROL or SET commands for *PRINT* jobs submitted from a terminal session.
DELIVERY=NONE will disable a previous delivery specification for future print jobs. The delivery schedule and stations serviced are given in the public file *DELIVERY.
Additional Features of the Xerox 9700
The Xerox 9700 has many features beyond those described above. It can print characters in different sizes and shapes. Boldface, italics, and script characters are all available. Special and foreign-language characters can be included. The fairly high resolution of the Xerox 9700 (300 dots per inch) makes some graphics support possible, although the 9700 is character addressable rather than dot addressable and so is not a true graphics device. Electronic forms can be used to simulate lined and shaded paper.
These additional features are described inUsing the Xerox 9700 Page Printer, Reference R1038.
Programs Supporting Xerox 9700 Features
Only a few programs currently support the multiple-font and multiple-page capabilities of the Xerox 9700.
The program *PAGEFONTCONVERT, which is described in Reference R1038, may be used to reformat output intended for a line printer into output more appropriate for the Xerox 9700 page printer.
The program *SIDEBYSIDE, which is also described in Reference R1038, may be used to combine several pages onto one sheet of output.
The *TEX text-processing program supports the multiple-font capability of the page printer.
The program STAT:TEXTEDIT, a text-processor supported by the Statistical Research Laboratory, supports the multiple-font capability of the page printer (see the Stat Lab publication, TEXTEDIT).
Rates
Printing charges for the page printer are based on the number of images printed and the number of sheets of paper consumed, not on the number of pages or number of lines printed. The specific charges are given in the public file *RATES.
Operational Considerations
In spite of the high speed of the page printer, turnaround time for small jobs may be slower than when the job is printed on a line printer, because it is not possible to remove output from either of the two output bins without manual intervention (unless the bin fills up). Each output bin holds up to 1500 sheets, so it could take up to 25 minutes for a bin to fill. However, we expect turnaround for jobs to be faster than this, because the bins will be emptied manually on a periodic basis. Also, after a job has been sent to the page printer for printing, but before it has actually been printed and removed from the output bin, it will be shown as “done” on the job status screen and by the command
SYS QUEUE
Because there is only one page printer at any site, a single large job could tie up the printer for fairly long periods and no shorter jobs would be able to print. If this proves to be a serious problem, some restrictions may be placed on the maximum size of jobs that can be printed on the page printer during certain hours of the day. Finally, if the page printer is out of service for repair or maintenance, no jobs can be printed and turnaround time will suffer.