"ipmviewer": Spool File Viewer for Infoprint Manager for Windows NT and Windows 2000

DESCRIPTION:

ipmviewer is a tool for viewing the contents of print jobs which are spooled in "Infoprint Manager for Windows NT and Windows 2000" (hereafter referred to as "IPM").

ipmviewer consists of a GUI which displays the current jobs within a server. ipmviewer uses IPM's transforms and transform sequences to transform all or part of a spooled job's data to the AFP datastream, and then uses the "IBM AFP Viewer plug-in" to display the transformed data. This allows an operator or administrator to simply double-click on an IPM job and see the job contents.

SUPPORT:

ipmviewer is not part of the IPM product. It is provided "as is", and will not be serviced through standard IBM Support.

RESTRICTIONS:

Due to limitations in resolution and resource processing (or lack thereof), ipmviewer is not intended to be used for checking whether a production job is properly formatted before printing (i.e. it is not a "print preview" tool). Rather, it is intended to provide a quick peek into the contents of a print job, for example to check which job it is.
ipmviewer can only view spool files that were originally sent to the local server (the system on which it is running).

PRE-REQUISITES:

Infoprint Manager for Windows NT and Windows 2000, V1.1 or greater Install and configure per product documentation
AFP Viewer Plug-in

INSTALLATION:

IMPORTANT: ipmviewer must be installed in the bin directory under the IPM install path!

Load ipmviewer.zip into ipm-install-path\bin directory
Unzip the file ("unzip ipmviewer.zip")
A version of the IBM AFP Viewer plug-in ships with the ipmviewer package. This installation file (gnsp32dm.exe) contains a snapshot of the IBM AFP Viewer plug-in taken at the time the ipmviewer package was built. If you want a newer version of the IBM AFP Viewer plug-in, go to the IBM AFP Viewer plug-in download site and follow the directions there before proceeding to the next step.
Install the IBM AFP Viewer plug-in for your browser: type "gnsp32dm" on the command line and follow the on-screen instructions.
Ensure that the IPM server is up and running
From a command window, type "setup_ipmviewer"

RUNNING IPMVIEWER:

From a command window, type "ipmviewer [queue-name]", where queue-name is an optional argument containing the name of the queue containing the jobs to list. If no queue is specified, ipmviewer lists all the jobs in the server.

You may also create a shortcut icon to ipm-install-path\bin\ipmviewer.exe on your desktop, and then simply double-click on that icon.

CUSTOMIZATION:

Environment Variables:

ACROBAT_READER

If you will be viewing PDF files and you have Adobe's Acrobat Reader installed, you may want to set this environment variable to the fully-qualified path name of the Acrobat Reader .exe file (e.g. "c:\acrobat\Reader\AcroRd32.exe"). If this variable is not set, PDF files will be treated like other files: converted to AFP and viewed using the AFP Viewer Plug-in.

TRUNC_THRESHOLD

This environment variable contains the size, in bytes above which a print file will be truncated before transforming. Setting this value lower will increase performance but reduce the portion of the job that will be visible when viewed. This can be:

      not set: defaults to truncate at 300000 bytes
      0:       does no truncate before transform
      nnnnnnn: truncates at nnnnnnn bytes

DEBUG_VIEW

This environment variable is used for debugging problems with ipmviewer. Setting it to "Y" will cause ipmviewer to write out various bits of debug information while running.

CHANGE HISTORY:

March 6, 2000 - V1.1 - Original version
March 27, 2000 - V1.2 - Added PDF support
March 9, 2001 - V1.3 - Fix to Netscape AFP display problem