Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide

Your Default Printer

Your system may have more than one printer that you can use for printing. One of the printers will be designated as the default printer. The default printer is the printer that your desktop automatically uses if you submit a document for printing and you don't specify a printer name. When you first open your desktop, the default printer is shown in the Front Panel.

To find out how to display a printer other than your default printer in the Front Panel, see "To Change the Front Panel Printer".

To Determine the Default Printer

    To find out the name of your default printer, double-click the Default printer control in the Personal Printers subpanel in the Front Panel.

This starts the Printer Jobs application. The name under the printer icon is the name of your default printer.

To Change the Default Printer

To designate a different printer as the default printer:

  1. Go to your home folder and open the file .dtprofile.

  2. Add or edit a line that sets a value for the LPDEST environment variable:

    LPDEST=printer_device; export LPDEST

    If you are using csh the syntax is:

    setenv LPDEST printer_device

    Note -

    This change will take effect the next time you log out and back in again.

    For example, the following line would change the default printer to the printer whose device name is laser3d.

    LPDEST=laser3d; export LPDEST

    If you are using csh the syntax is:

    setenv LPDEST laser3d