[10306] in Athena Bugs
(DS3100) Version 7.4G: ezprint
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dkk@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Tue Feb 23 01:04:27 1993
From: dkk@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 01:04:23 -0500
To: bugs@Athena.MIT.EDU
System type, version: n/a
System name: n/a
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What's wrong:
/usr/andrew/bin/ezprint help users unlink their files.
Users are accustomed to using "lpr -z" to print a file with
Zephyr notification. Users of ez sometimes use ezprint to print their
ez files. If they use "ezprint -z", thinking that they'll get Zephyr
notification, it appears that their files are unlinked silently upon
successful completion of the print job.
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What should have happened:
Perhaps "ezprint -z" should fork "delete" rather than
unlinking. Perhaps a public education campaign would be worthwhile
(though I don't think it would be an appropriate or good solution).
In any case, the user I spoke to tonight should have had some result
other than the mysterious loss of the digital copy of her day's work.
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TFM (documentation references):
The following is an excerpt from "man ezprint"
-z: The "-z" option tells ezprint to Zap (delete) the file when it is
done printing and the print appears to have been successful. This
option also causes ezprint to lock the file when it opens it for reading
with flock; thus an application can safely collect things to be printed
in a file and periodically queue them for printing, relying on the flock
(which the application must also do) to ensure that both duplicate
prints and missing prints due to timing errors do not occur.
If the print request fails, the file is renamed to PrintErr.xxx (for
some not-previously-existing version of xxx) in the same directory.
