RIO Remote I/O System User Guide
What is transparent printing?
Page 270
What is transparent printing?Most terminals have an auxiliary (AUX) port which can be connec ted to a serial printer. Data
can then be output to the terminal or the printer via the same serial line. This is called
transparent print (or xprint) and is designed for printing simple ASCII text.
A separate xprint device node (/dev/xprt/r00n where n is device number) is created for each
port. This device is enabled automatically if either the local or modem device is enabled for
the port.
When a host card receives data addressed to the transparent print device i t prefixes it with
the transparent print mode ON string and appends it with the trans parent mode OFF string.
The ON and OFF strings for each terminal type availabl e are defined by the rio.cf file. See
Appendix B rio.cf administration file for more details.
Terminal I/O has absolute priority over printer output. Transparent print data will only be sent
when there is a break in output to the terminal (for more than a tenth of a second)
For each port, the transparent printing parameters are controlled by an entry in the rio.cf file
found in the /etc/rio directory on your system. The entry fo r each port includes definitions of
the terminal type, transparent print throughput rate and device name. Se e Appendix B rio.cf
administration file for further details.
Serial communications
port on terminal
Ter m i n a l
Auxiliary port
on terminal
Printer
rioconfig utility rio.cf file
RIODevice driver RIO host
card
Solaris operating
system
Computer system