REMOTESYMB

				John Osudar

			   Electronics Department
			Argonne National Laboratory
				  205 A-051
			   9700 South Cass Avenue
			   Argonne, IL 60439-4837

			       Phone numbers:
			       FTS: 972-7505
			      (312) 972-7505

			 Electronic mail addresses:
			 Bitnet:  B35049 at ANLCMT
			    MFENET:  B35049@AN2

REMOTESYMB is a VMS print symbiont that can be used to implement standard 
print functions to a remote printer across DECnet.  Unlike remote printer
support based upon the EXECSYMB server symbiont (e.g. SENDSPOOL), REMOTESYMB 
does not copy the file to be printed to the remote node.  Rather, it writes 
the formatted output (that would normally be sent directly to a printer) 
across a DECnet logical link to the remote destination.  This allows the 
REMOTESYMB-driven queue to use a device control library, and does not require 
the destination to be a VAX/VMS node.

REMOTESYMB is viewed by VMS as a "user-modified symbiont", i.e. it uses the 
standard VMS shareable symbiont, specifying replacement routines for some of 
the standard components.  In particular, REMOTESYMB replaces the output 
routine of the standard symbiont with one that opens a Fortran LUN, specifying 
as the output name a device or logical name that can include a DECnet 
nodename.  Thus, the output that is written by this symbiont will go to the 
specified location -- if the destination is specified as MYNODE::LTA500: or 
RSXNOD::TT7:, that is where the output will go.  The remote device must either 
be dedicated to this application, or (more practically) must be a spooled 
device on its own system.  (Note that this restricts the destination to 
systems that have true "spooling" to a secondary storage device, e.g. VMS or 
RSX-11M-Plus.)

To use REMOTESYMB, copy REMOTESYMB.EXE to SYS$SYSTEM:, and initialize the 
queue as you would for any normal print queue, but specify the following 
additional qualifiers:

	/PROCESSOR=REMOTESYMB
	/ON=logical-name

The "/ON=" qualifier value should be a system logical name that translates to 
the destination nodename and device name, e.g.

	DEFINE/SYSTEM  REMOTE_LN03  RSXNOD::TT7:

and then

	INITIALIZE/QUEUE/PROCESSOR=REMOTESYMB/ON=REMOTE_LN03  LASERQUEUE etc.

As an alternative, you can specify the node and device directly in "/ON",
replacing the double colon with a double underscore, e.g.

	INITIALIZE/QUEUE/PROCESSOR=REMOTESYMB/ON=RSXNOD__TT7:  LASERQUEUE etc.

Notes
-----

(1) The "/ON=" destination can be any valid filespec (i.e. 
    node::device:[directory]filename.ext;version).  There may be some 
    useful, if peculiar, applications for this.

(2) When sending to an RSX-11M-Plus node, remember that M-Plus (as of the
    current version, V3.0) does not really have a "default DECnet account",
    and has no proxies.  To implement the equivalent of a "default DECnet
    account", to allow access to a printer without specifying a username and 
    password in the "/ON=" logical name, create an account on the M-Plus 
    system that has a null "last name" and a null password.