NAME

mcprint - write binary data to printer using terminfo capabilities

SYNOPSIS

#include <curses.h>

int mcprint(char * data, int len);

DESCRIPTION

mcprint, an ncurses extension to the curses library, uses the terminal's prtr_non (mc5p) or prtr_on (mc5) and prtr_off (mc4) media copy capabilities, if defined, to send len bytes of the given string data to a printer attached to the terminal.

mcprint has no means of flow control to the printer nor of knowing how much buffering it has. Your application is responsible for keeping the rate of writes to the printer below its continuous throughput rate, typically about half of its nominal characters-per-second (cps) rating. Dot-matrix printers and 6-page-per-minute laser printers can typically handle 80 cps, so a conservative rule of thumb is to sleep for one second after sending an 80-character line.

RETURN VALUE

On success, mcprint returns the number of characters sent to the printer.

mcprint returns ERR if the write operation fails for any reason. In that event, errno contains either a value set by write(2), or one of the following.

ENODEV: The terminal lacks relevant media copy capabilities.
ENOMEM: ncurses could not allocate sufficient memory to buffer the write operation.

EXTENSIONS

mcprint is an ncurses(3X) extension, and is not found in SVr4 curses, 4.4BSD curses, or any other previous curses implementation.

PORTABILITY

Applications employing this ncurses extension should condition its use on the visibility of the NCURSES_VERSION preprocessor macro.

HISTORY

ncurses introduced mcprint prior to version 1.9.9g (1996).

BUGS

Padding in the prtr_non (mc5p), prtr_on (mc5), and prtr_off (mc4) capabilities is not interpreted.