Maths Printing Guidelines

Printing is expensive so please help to cut costs and save the environment as follows:

• Is your printing really necessary? Can you read it on screen or print only the pages you need?
• Use as little paper as possible.
  • Preview files on screen and get them right before printing (e.g. use xdvi for .dvi files).
  • Print on both sides of the paper using a printer with duplex capability.
  • Use dvired, which prints two A5 sized pages of TeX on one A4 piece of paper.
  • For text files (anything created with a text editor) use a2ps which defaults to two pages per side of A4. Use the options -3, -4, ... -9 for more pages per sheet or type "info a2ps" to find out how to control the layout exactly.
  • For files which are displayed with a dedicated viewer e.g. pdf files, look through the Print menu for a "multiple pages per sheet" option.
  • Split a large TeX document into several manageable files and use \input commands to control what is processed and printed.
  • When printing long documents select only the pages you need to print. E.g. use the dvips -pp option.
• Colour printing costs more than black and white. On average it costs 3p more to print a B&W A4 page on a colour printer than on a B&W printer. Separate the printing of colour and B&W pages if possible.

Be nice to other users: except in extreme cases of emergency (e.g. your thesis has to be at the binders in 30 minutes) do not send large jobs to a printer during office hours. Be aware that print jobs containing graphics may be very big. Limit the number of graphs in any file to avoid excessive transmission and processing times in the printer. Always use the fastest printers for such jobs.

Do not put anything other than blank printer paper in the laser printers. If you try to print on the back of used paper, the old toner will shed and clog up the printer.

Do not leave output lying around near the printers for others to clear up. If you waste paper by printing large amounts of output and not collecting it expect to be charged.

Never send a document more than once to a printer just because it hasn't printed. Try to find out why it hasn't printed. Look at the print queue (see below).

There are several fast printers available for public use, if one is down (e.g. waiting for a repair) use another.

The List of Printers: their location, capabilities, status and queued jobs is produced by the CUPS server and should always be accurate. Printers listed as COLOR can print in colour.