Printer queue query

[Kalman Reti <Reti@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM>]

    Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 11:09 EDT
    From: jo@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Jonathan Ostrowsky)

	Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 12:20 EDT
	From: pan@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com (Paul Pangaro)

	OK, so I have the Print system loaded, but I dont want to send a big
	file to the queue (maybe  my LMFS is too tight for space). Is there a
	way to force printing to go directly to the printer, without going into
	the printer queue first (obviously the printer is on this same machine).
	Disabling services, or stopping the printer queue does not seem to work.
	Thanks.

	Best,
	PANgaro

    The cure might be worse than the disease.

    If you can squeeze out the FEPFS space to grow your LMFS, you probably
    should.  Bypassing the print spooler to print a big job means that
    you'll be watching "Serial Out" in your status line for far longer than
    you'd care to surrender use of your machine.

    I have a printer attached to my machine (to the console serial port,
    actually) and once printed something before I loaded the print system.
    It's ugly.
I beg to differ; I used this configuration routinely when I was at SCRC.
Only the process actually doing the printing has to wait in serial out.
If you do :hardcopy file, that's a background process.  Even if you use
a Zmacs command, you can always start up another Zmacs to get work done
with while the first waits in serial out.

However, it doesn't solve Paul's problem; the issue is that both the
simple-minded serial server and the spooler respond to the same service
request.  In order to go back to the old mode, you have to UNDEFUN the
new server code, instead of just disabling services or stopping the
printer.

UNDEFUNing this code is relatively straightforward unless it has been
multiply patched in the world;  recompiling from source would also
work but I don't know if the customers have the requisite sources.