PC5250 and the Print Key

March 9, 2005 Hey, Ted

I have a tip for your newsletter. For ages, I have always used the PrtScrn button from a Client Access PC5250 terminal emulation session to print the contents of a display on my local network printer. Recently, I needed the screen contents to go to an output queue instead, as would occur when I would press the Print key on dumb terminals in ages past. It took a while, but I found the key sequence for the Print key.

To send the contents of a display screen to an output queue, use Control NumLock. I could not find this information documented anywhere and only located the Print key sequence after a lot of trial and error.

–David

Thanks for bringing the Print key equivalent to our attention, David. Like you, I typically use the PrtScrn button of the toolbar and hadn’t thought about the Print key in a long time.

PC5250, the emulator used within Client Access, defines two print screen actions. The one that sends the display image to the local network printer is called Print Screen. You are free to map this action to a key sequence of your choosing, but I think people usually use the PrtScrn button of the toolbar or the Print Screen option of the File menu.

The action that emulates the dumb terminal’s Print key is called Host Print. I found it strange that the Customize Keyboard map did not show Host Print assigned to the NumLock key. However, I am currently using an old version of Client Access. The Find dialog (located under the Actions menu of Customize Keyboard) showed Host Print mapped to Alt-F12 and Ctl-Pause. I don’t know if those key sequences were mapped that way at installation, or if someone mapped them along the way. These two options and Ctl-NumLock all work identically on my PC.

–Ted

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