Configuring the Print Subsystem to use the Bidirectional Print Filter

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The bidi print filter is integrated into the AIX printing process. This means that after configuration is complete, you can print bidi data using the normal print commands such as lp, qprt, or enq. You can control the bidi filter behavior by setting environment variables before running the print commands.

To configure the /usr/bin/ebprt print filter as a part of the AIX print subsystem, complete the following steps:

  1. Create a print queue.
  2. Add the /usr/bin/ebprt printer filter to the Printer Queue Attributes in SMIT by completing the following steps:
    From the SMIT main menu, click Print Spooling > AIX Print Spooling > Change / Show Print Queue Characteristics. Select the Queue created in the previous step. click Default Print Job Attributes, and set the following:
    1. Pre-processing FILTER NAME to "p"
    2. the CODE PAGE of the print file
    3. the CODE PAGE of the printer

    From the SMIT main menu, click Print Spooling > AIX Print Spooling > Programming Tools. Select the Change / Show Pre-processing Filters. Set the pr filter to usr/bin/ebprt -w%IwW.

    Note: If the data being printed is Arabic, the print file code page value must always be set to "IBM-1046", even if the data is in "ISO8859-6" encoding. This is to ensure that the output sent to the printer can contain shaped glyphs.
  3. Set the appropriate environment variables
    • LANG: the installed bidi locale for the filter to run under.
    • EBPRTCFG: the profile name loaded from the configuration file.
  4. Run a print command.

    This can be done by running the lp, qprt, or enq commands on the file name with the queue name defined.