RPM helps you control your printing environment

Mon, 10/07/2019 - 13:14 By Dave Brooks

RPM Remote Print Manager® offers numerous ways to customize print data. The following features all have real-world uses. Many of these features were added due to customer feedback.

Print processing features

GUI

Actions--things you can do to print jobs

Transforms--ways to change print data

Multi-threaded output

  • Small jobs don't have to wait in line behind large jobs
  • Drive more than one printer at a time
  • Increased throughput
  • RPM Select has two print tasks, RPM Elite starts at 5, configurable to 256

Fully customizable print job workflow

  • Transforms are now broken out,  with full user control
  • Transforms can be specified in any order and can repeat as needed
  • Multiple actions on a print job mean you can broadcast print to many printer models, or print/archive/email all at the same time

Print job archiving

  • Keep a maximum number of jobs, or for a maximum time period
  • Automated cleanup task checks jobs regularly

Reprint jobs

  • Any archived job can be reprinted or copied to another queue  

Email status and alerts

  • Optional email status to the user when job prints
  • Optional email alert or SMS message on printer error/recovery  

Automated device testing

  • Any device that goes to error will be tested periodically
  • If your printer goes offline, RPM will start printing to it again when it becomes available  

Drag and drop files from Windows

  • Use RPM processing without sending the file through the network print connection  

Drag & drop between queues

  • Easily copy jobs from one queue to another
  • Optionally move jobs instead of copy, configurable option  

Duplicate queues quickly

  • Replaces the cumbersome process of storing and re-using queue settings  

Text printing to any Windows printer

  • Text and font rendering like any normal Windows application
  • Elite only: text watermark, many image formats supported, transparent print
  • Supports non-spacing character sets such as Thai
  • Supports bold, underline, overstrike  

Raw printing supports native printer formats

  • Print your host data plus our optional transforms, such as insert form file
  • RPM also generates PCL and PDF, supported by many modern printers  

Run a program on your print job

  • Specify program, arguments, working directory
  • The program can optionally use stdin or stdout
  • New: optionally specify a maximum idle time, to detect hung programs
  • Use job data such as name or title in command processing
  • Optionally save stderr to log  

Copy jobs to another queue

  • Faster than sending it back to RPM for further processing
  • Avoid duplicating queue configurations, easier to update specifics
  • Group-related actions or transforms  

Automatically Email Print Files

  • RPM will automatically email print files received from a host system to multiple locations
  • A text or HTML print job can be the body of the message, any other file type can be attached.  

PCL to PDF

  • Elite only: Convert PCL files to PDF
  • Supports PDF password, metadata, templates

Filter transform, run a program on your data midstream

  • Elite only: Do custom conversions prior to printing
  • Extract data using a script, hand it off to a custom filter
  • Supports maximum idle time handling, terminate hung processes  

Text to PDF output

  • Automatically convert print files to PDF
  • PDFs mimic text print jobs, for print archiving
  • Print text and save a copy in PDF for easy archiving and retrieval
  • Elite only: PDF password, metadata, PDF watermark, supports common image files

Text markup

  • Convert plain text to our internal text markup format
  • Performs data cleanup, and handles overprint, bold, and line segments
  • Output to PDF, PCL, HTML, text print
  • Can specify lines per inch and lines per page, optionally let RPM find a good fit for data

Text to PCL output

  • PCL output mimics text print jobs allowing RPM to use full printer speed
  • Supports duplex, paper tray selections, fonts, bold
  • Supports many PCL character sets and commonly used symbols such as §

Text to HTML output

  • HTML output mimics text print jobs allowing RPM to populate an HTML server with pages automatically
  • Output similar to text output with an accurate representation of print documents

Unicode support

  • Read and write UTF-8, UCS-2, ISO code pages, EBCDIC, and many others
  • More support for multi-byte character sets

Computer Output Reduction (COR)

  • Provides the ability to automatically rotate orientation and scale the line length, lines per page

Insert & Append Data

  • You can insert bytes (using our built-in byte editor) or a file before the print job data.
  • You can also append bytes (again, with our byte editor) or a file after the print job data.

Remove PCL Codes

  • RPM optionally strips PCL codes from a print job.
  • Text printing does this automatically, but you can also select it for pass-through and filter printing.

  • RPM supports text banner, which inserts plain text using job data
  • RPM also supports PCL banner which can display job data, or provide a blank page pulled from another tray

UNIX to DOS (Convert LF to CR/LF)

  • Solves the "stair-step" problem
  • Normally this is not a factor when using our text markup operations

String Translations

  • The string translator does search and optionally replace in your print job
  • Supports regular expressions, not required
  • Both text and binary are supported
  • Commonly used to replace PCL codes or similar customization--our tech staff can assist you with this

ASA Carriage Control

  • RPM translates ASA Carriage Control format
  • This eliminates the need for the host computer to perform the translation into a more standard format such as PCL or PDF.
  • Still used in legacy print environments such as Xerox data spools

Convert SCS

  • RPM interprets SCS codes and translates them to our internal text markup
  • For non-text printing people commonly remove the text markup, for instance with check printing
  • For text output such as PDF creation or text printing, RPM generates a high-fidelity result preserving the instructions in the SCS file to ASCII

Use Installed Code Page

  • RPM uses installed code pages to translate print jobs into UTF-8, and optionally UTF-8 or UCS-2 into other code pages.
  • Code pages typically have a maximum character length of 1 or 2.
  • Single-byte code pages include East European, and double-byte code pages include Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional).