SAP Note 21160 - Printing graphics via R/3 spool

Symptom:

1. Printout of SAP graphic with R/3 spool incorrect/does not function

2. Spool job remains in spool as incorrect job

Reason and Prerequisites

1. Incorrect printer used or page titles in data stream

2. PrintControl not defined (only up to 2.2E)

3. Incorrect page feed format etc. (only up to 2.2E)

Solution

1. General remarks
Use only printer of device type 'POSTGRAP' (2.x, 3.x) or 'GRAPHICS' (as of 3.0).
The SAP graphic is printed in postscript format. Therefore you might have to install a printer which is capable of postscript as printer with one of the specified device types in addition to the existing printer installation. The printer is then known within the system under 2 different names.
The format 'LETTER' is defined for device types so that there is no additional formatting within the print job.

If the graphic is generated by a report in which a TOP-OF-PAGE is active, page titles can be included in the printout. This causes an incorrect printout because the printer does not understand that this information is postscript information. This problem has been corrected in 3.0 and as of 2.2E / 2.1K.

Release 3.x has a user parameter (maintain under System -> User profile -> User parameters) with the ID 'GRD' which can be used to maintain a printer with the default setting for graphic printout.

2. Accessing other printers, selection of the tray, paper size
As of Release 3.1I it is possible to define your own printer types which can be processed by the print dialog.
POSTGR* (6 characters fixed, rest can be chosen freely)
ZGRAP* (5 characters fixed, rest can be chosen freely), for example 'ZGRAPA3', 'ZGRAPA4' (format 'LETTER' in each case).
With these printer types within the customer namespace which should initially be a copy of POSTGRAP, you can set up your printers in such a way that for example a specific paper tray or a specific paper size is selected with previously activated control commands. (Transaction SPAD)
Also see Note 78539.

Is it then necessary to generate a separate printer with the correspondingly modified device type (ZGRAPA3H, ZGRAPA3Q etc.) for every paper format (DIN A3 portrait, DIN A3 landscape and so on).
Here it is important that the original print data is no longer affected by this. If you, for example, create an A4 graphic but you print with an A3 printer the printout is of course not enlarged.

Example: Initialization to select the paper tray
Copy printer type 'POSTGRAP' to ZGRAP*' with '*' for the respective paper formats.
Add the paper tray selection to the initialization sequence of the printer.
You can do this as follows:
Copy ZGRAPHA3 (for DIN A3). Enter the following postscript commands in the initialization sequence:
%%BeginSetup\n
mark {\n
%%BeginFeature: *PageSize A3\n
<< /DeferredMediaSelection true /PageSize [842 1190] /Imagin
setpagedevice\n
%%EndFeature\n
} stopped cleartomark\n
%%EndSetup\n
Set the page size as follows for the DIN A4 print:
<< /DeferredMediaSelection true /PageSize [595 842] /Imagin
If you now want to print on A3 select printer type ZGRAPHA3, for A4 select printer type ZGRAPHA4. This step is not neccessary if you are
using a 6.20 Sapgui with patch level 45 or newer.

3.

4. PrintControl, for example COL0N, not defined (2.x POSTGRAP, LETTER only)
Using the spool administration, define the print controls for
the device types POSTGRAP as empty. There are a total of 28 print controls:
CNT_C, COL(0-7)H, COL(0-7)V, COL(0-7)N, SABLD, SAOFF, SAULN

5. Incorrect page control
Using the spool administration (format for device type POSTGRAP, format type 'LETTER'), maintain the following formats:

Printer initialization (SETUP) : \x04
Reset after end (LEAVE) : \x04
End a page (ENDPAGE) : # nothing
End a line (ENDLINE) : \n