Using Banner Plug-ins

Unlike other Plug-ins, which are associated with Banks or Pharos services, Banners are specified for Print Groups. A Banner can be a separate program or a template file.

Banner pages are not charged for.

Uniprint supports special characters for French, Italian, German and Spanish in Banners. A sample banner page named “Sample supporting FIGS.txt” can be found on the main Pharos disk image, in the directory \tools\templates\banners.

Program or Handler Banners

A program or handler banner is a program that is executed just before the job is printed. This program generates the banner file and prints it separately before the actual print job.

The Plug-in is called with the following arguments:

"<result_pathname>" - string; the pathname of the result file.
"<pathname>" - string ; pathname to write the banner to.
"<username>" - string ; the owner of the job.
"<group>" - string ; the group to which the owner belongs.
"<job_name>" - string ; the name of the job, the document name e.g. untitled.txt.
<sheet_count> - int ; job length in sheets
<job_cost> - float ; the cost of the job to four decimal places e.g. 01.2500.
"<queue>" - string ; job spool queue.
"<spool_datetime>" - string ; the date and time the job arrived in the queue (local time).
"<printer>" - string ; the name of the printer which will print the job.
"<print_datetime>" - string ; the print date and time (local time)
<page_count> - int ; job length in pages.
“<user_alias>” - string ; user Alias for the owner of the job.
"<print_group>"-string; the Print Group associated to the Queue to which the job was submitted

There are no extra returns and the print job is aborted if the Plug-in returns failure. It is expected to write to the pathname argument a banner document. The banner file written should be a complete print job (.SPL file).

Template Banners

A template banner is a file containing keywords that are replaced by the relevant job information. This file can be a simple text file, or something more sophisticated like a spool file. See below for one method of creating a banner from a spool file.

For example, you could create a banner page that contains the keyword "__UNP_OWNER__" which at print time is replaced by the actual user printing the job (if known).

The full list of supported keywords:

Keyword	Function
__UNP_OWNER_ALIAS__	The user Alias for the user printing the job
__UNP_JOBNAME__	The name of the job
__UNP_JOBID__	The Windows job identifier
__UNP_PAGES__	The number of pages
__UNP_SHEETS__	The number of sheets
__UNP_COST__	The cost of the job
__UNP_LCOST__	The cost of the job in the local currency of the server
__UNP_OWNER__	The owner of the job (unmangled)
__UNP_MANGLED_OWNER__	The owner of the job (mangled)
__UNP_BALANCE__	The job owner's balance (total balance of all purses)
__UNP_LBALANCE__	The job owner's balance in the local currency of the server
__UNP_PURSE_1__	The balance of the job owner's first purse ("Technology Grant" by default)
__UNP_LPURSE_1__	The balance of the job owner's first purse in the local currency of the server
__UNP_PURSE_2__	The balance of the job owner's second purse ("Tuition Fees" by default)
__UNP_LPURSE_2__	The balance of the job owner's second purse in the local currency of the server
__UNP_PURSE_3__	The balance of the job owner's third purse ("User Pays" by default)
__UNP_LPURSE_3__	The balance of the job owner's third purse in the local currency of the server
__UNP_GROUP__	The group the owner belongs to
__UNP_PRINTGROUP__	The Print Group associated to the Queue to which this job was submitted
__UNP_SPOOLQ__	The Queue to which this job was submitted
__UNP_SPOOL_DATE__	The date the job was spooled from the user's workstation
__UNP_SPOOL_TIME__	The time the job was spooled
__UNP_SPOOL_DATETIME__	The date and time the job was spooled
__UNP_PRINTER__	The printer the job will be printing to
__UNP_PRINT_DATE__	The date the job was moved to the printer
__UNP_PRINT_TIME__	The time the job was moved to the printer
__UNP_PRINT_DATETIME__	The date and time the job was moved to the printer

A sample banner page named sample.txt can be found on the main Pharos disk image , in the directory \tools\templates\banners.

Creating a Template Banner from a Spool File

While a template banner can be as simple as a text (.TXT) file containing the relevant keywords, a banner created from a spool (.SPL) file provides a more sophisticated alternative. A spool file could be directed to print to a separate tray, for example, so that banner pages are printed on different paper to regular print jobs.

The __UNP__ keywords in the spool file must be plain text - if the print driver renders them, they will not be picked up and substituted by Pharos. Some print drivers (especially PostScript drivers) make this difficult, meaning the .SPL file must be edited after it is generated.

The following instructions describe one way to create a banner page from a spool file:

Create a single-page document in a word processor or text editor, using the above keywords as appropriate.
In Pharos Administrator, set up the Banner details of the Print Group. Make sure that the Banner Type property for the Print Group is set to "Template".
Associate the Print Group to the desired Queue.
Print the file (created in Step 1) to the Queue , to render it with the correct driver.
Use Pharos Remote or Pharos Administrator to get the job ID or use the Save Spool file action in the Job Management context.

If the keywords are not replaced correctly, try using a different application to print the banner document in step 2. In the worst case, use Notepad or WordPad to edit and print the document.

A banner page is typically created in the Print Groups context of Pharos Administrator. If you have configured your print queue to use a separator/banner page outside of Pharos Administrator (via Advanced Printer Properties on Windows) before creating your install package, users will end up with two banner pages being printed. When a user prints a document to a Pharos queue, the client OS adds a separator page to the print job, and then when the job arrives at the server, the server (on which the Pharos Queue is installed) also adds a separator page, therefore creating 2 separator pages. To work around this issue, you will need to remove the separator page on the server side and leave the one on the client side.