Network Printing

[ninjabeaver]

OK guys,

Heres another one to brain storm.

1:. Is there a method around so that when a student prints out anything that their username is printed at the bottom or top of everypage?

2:. What software or method does everyone use to control the amount of printing around their school site?

Question 1 is something the staff here have all ways wanted implemented but no-one seems to be able to offer the solution.

[Geoff]

Number 1 is easy. Go to the printer(s) in question and look in the properties. On the Advanced tab there's an option for a 'seperator page'. You need to create a text file with some special control codes and point that setting at the text file. Here's an example, explaining along the way:

$ ---- this can be any character, and must be the first character on the first line. Choose a character not normally used to be the control character, in this case $
$LUser Name $N ---- $L is used to display normal test until another code is found, $N displayed the username
$L, Job Number $I ---- $I displays the job number
$E ---- $E means end of page

Other characters you can use are

$B$S ---- Turn on block character printing
$D ---- Data job printer
$F<filename> ---- A file to print
$H ---- Printer specific control code
$x ---- Where x is a number of blank lines to print
$T ---- Time job was printed
$U ---- Turns off block character printing
$Wxx ---- Width of the separator page

[Ric_]

@Geoff

Doesn't that just print a page between the jobs (i.e. there will be an A4 sheet with the username, etc. on and then the job will follow that)?

This would be no good if some idiot decides to mix the pages up.

[Geoff]

Correct.

[ninjabeaver]

Yeah, it does a seperator page. I'm actually after something that gets tagged onto the top or the bottom of the page like a header or footer, but just not for Word etc but everything like web pages, picture print outs etc.

[Geoff]

If your print server is a Linux box (with samba and/or cups for example) you can do it by reprocessing the postscript file after it comes through ghostscript.

However you cannot do it under windows without writing your own GDI printer drivers. I suspect this is beyond most mortals.

[Alex]

We use 'Print Manager Plus' - reasonably effective at the job

Alows you to assign each AD user a budget for printing etc etc.

[ninjabeaver]

Forgot to say we use a piece of software called StopIt3 by Flo Software. Reasonably priced and we've had it implemented for the past two years.

It monitors printers, pages printed, costs etc as well as monitorying individual users HDD space. It then locks the account if you use too much HDD space. Then the old 'I cant logon' bit starts.

[ChrisH]

I found a code snippet a while ago that helps a little but only when they print straight from Internet Explorer. So it is of limited use but still good as this is a problem here. Yes I know some of you will use firefox etc etc ......

Dim WSHShell, RegKey, myName
myName = createobject("wscript.network").username

Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
RegKey = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup\"
WSHShell.RegWrite regkey & "header", "Printed By " &myName

This just alters a reg key and adds a header to any document printed from IE.
In the example above it writes "Printed By username". You can make this print in the footer as well.

[RobC]

ChrisH...

I'm assuming that code snippet is run as a logon script?

Rob.

[ChrisH]

ChrisH...

I'm assuming that code snippet is run as a logon script?

Rob.

Yes run it as part of your log in script

[mark]

I've used Print Manager Plus. Very good. No one here is really THAT bothered to charge departments tho'. Although we do keep a tally of colour printing and charge that on.

Also in Word you can enforce a footer via .ADM to have the username printed. Did that for a while.

Now all we do is "keep printed documents" on selected printers, that way we can see which user printed.

[ChrisH]

Hmm I cant find the footer option for word 2000 in the ADMs.

[Geoff]

You need 2003 IIRC.

[ChrisH]

Well that rules that out as most of our licences only cover 2000