BIN = <paper source or bin name or ID number>

(Windows only) This optional command allows you to specify a particular paper source in a printer that has multiple paper sources. The possible options are:

BIN = UPPER

BIN = LOWER

BIN = MIDDLE

BIN = MANUAL

BIN = AUTO

BIN = ENVELOPE

BIN = ENVMANUAL

BIN = LARGEFMT

BIN = SMALLFMT

BIN = LARGECAPACITY

BIN = FORMSOURCE

BIN = USER<#>

BIN = <bin ID number>

 

Since some of these bin identifiers are rather cryptic, it may not be easy to determine what the appropriate name is for the bin you want to specify. Ultimately, this may require some trial and error, but you can at least get a list of the available bins in a specific printer, by adding one of the above BIN commands to your printer INI, then activating line printer trace mode and printing a sample file:

.SET TRACE LP ON

.PRINT <printer>=SYS:<printer>.INI

 

This will cause a lot of tracing information to be displayed to the screen, including a list of all of the BIN names for the specified printer.

Some printers may require that you manually configure them to allow the application to select the bin. See your printer documentation for details on that.

If you specify a bin that the printer does not support, the result will be dependent on the printer driver. (It may ignore the request, or it may attempt to give you a closest match.)

Some printers may implement “user-defined bins”. The first 8 of these can be usually be referenced by “USER1” through “USER8”. Note, however, that some printer drivers start the user-defined bins at something other than “USER1”. If in doubt, use the tracing technique described above to display the list of available bins.

When a printer supports a bin that is not recognized by name by A-Shell, it will appear in the list of bins (displayed when using SET TRACE LP ON) as a number. You can use any such number in the BIN command just like it was a bin name (e.g. BIN = 265).

For what it’s worth, “USER1” is equivalent to BIN #256, “USER2” to BIN #257, etc.

BIN works with both PASSTHROUGH=ON and with PASSTHROUGH=OFF.

BIN is one of the printer init file commands that has a GDI Printing Directive Equivalent.

BIN may specify an actual bin name as displayed by the driver properties of the printer as listed in the Registry. The generic names (LOWER, UPPER, etc.) and "User" names are still supported also. This should make it easier to determine which is the correct bin specification now.

See the sample program REGPTR.BP for an example of retrieving the BIN information for the default printer.