Printing on an AFP printer

To print on an AFP printer, you send your z/OS® print job to the AFP printer that your system programmer defined to PSF. For most jobs, you can use the same JCL that you would use for non-AFP printers, changing only the MVS™ routing information to direct your job to the correct printer. If you do not require special AFP functions, you do not need to specify any AFP options for your print job; you can use the PSF defaults defined for your printer.

The examples in this topic show how to select a printer by specifying the JCL class and destination parameters. You specify an output class either with a SYSOUT parameter in the DD statement for the data set, or with a CLASS parameter on an OUTPUT statement assigned to that DD statement (see CLASS). You must specify a class in one statement or the other.

In the first example, a single printer is defined for an output class; therefore, the CLASS parameter is all you need to specify. However, if an output class contains a group of printers, you also need to include a destination (DEST) parameter to select a specific printer from the group, as in the second example. You can specify DEST either in a DD statement or in an OUTPUT statement. If you do not specify the DEST parameter, and the output class contains more than one printer, the system selects the first available printer in the group.

Examples:

This example shows how you use only a SYSOUT parameter in the DD statement to select a printer with print class defined as A.
```
//AFPUSERA JOB ...
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=USERA
//DD1 DD SYSOUT=A
```
This example shows how you select a specific 3820 printer from a group of printers, all of which are defined as CLASS B. You want the 3820 printer with destination name REMOTE1. For this example, the DEST option is coded on the OUTPUT statement.
```
//AFPUSERB JOB ...
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=USERB
//OUT2 OUTPUT DEST=REMOTE1
//DD2 DD SYSOUT=B,OUT=(*.OUT2)
```

In both examples, the job prints according to the AFP defaults that PSF specified for the printer. For jobs requiring special AFP options, see the examples in Specifying a form definition.