NewDeal Technical Support Document 256

NOVELL NETWORKS


Using NewDeal software with Novell Netware

NewDeal software is network aware and has been thoroughly tested for compatibility with Novell Netware 2.x, 3.x and 4.x. Unless you have purchased the network version, you must have your NewDeal software installed on the hard drive of the machine where you want to run it. You should then be able to access shared drives and printers across the network.

A network version of NewDeal Office, designed to run from a network server, is available. Please contact NewDeal sales for information about the network version.

SHELL.CFG

You may need to create a SHELL.CFG file in your C: drive's root directory with the single line
file handles = 100
in the file.

To create the file, type the following at the DOS prompt:

echo file handles = 100 > shell.cfg
then press the Enter key.

Printing

If you are able to print to a shared network printer from DOS or with any other software, you should be able to print to it from your New Deal software. To test printing, open Preferences, Printer. Make sure you have the correct printer and port listed in the "Printers installed" box. Point and click on the printer you want to test, and then click the Test button.

NewDeal software should print a printer test page, with approximately half-inch high letters clearly written across the page. If it does not print anything, close the Printer section of Preferences and open the computer section. If you are printing over a redirected parallel (LPT) port, change the interface setting on that port to DOS. If the DOS setting does not work, try the BIOS setting.

If printing still does not work correctly on your network printer, but you are able to print to it from other programs, the problem may be a general printer problem and may not have to do with the Novell network at all. For more information about printing, see technical support document 214 (General Printing Help).

Capture

Capture is a Novell command which sets up a fake LPT port and sends the data printed to that port over the network to the printer server. If NewDeal is not printing over the Novell network or if you get printer off line errors, try this:
  1. exit to DOS
  2. copy lpt3:
If that doesn't work, then the problem is in the Novell network, not with NewDeal.

Problem: On a Novell network, the network printers treat each page as a separate document, ejecting a blank page after each one, then printing a new header page, the next page of the document, another blank page, and so on...

Solution: On Novell networks, there is a command called CAPTURE which can be included as part of your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. It basically tells the network which printer to send your printouts to, and allows you to include parameters. You need to use two commands (that are part of CAPTURE) to get NewDeal to print correctly: No Formfeed, and No Tabs.

If you tell CAPTURE to use No Formfeed, it will not print the blank page between each page of the document, but then weird garbage characters may appear on the left margin of the pages. It is the No Tabs command (which turns off automatic tab interpretation by the net) which solves the problem. The command line looks like this in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

CAPTURE /Q=2SLJET /L=1 /No Formfeed /No Tabs
The "Q=2SLJET" refers to the queue, a specific HP LaserJet in this example.
The "L=1" means that LPT:1 should print to the LaserJet.

Additional switches for CAPTURE include:

If you need exact syntax for CAPTURE, just type CAPTURE /? when you're logged onto your Novell net. NewDeal is not doing anything with the tabs, it's the Novell network. Using NO TABS tells the network to not create tab spacing in the final document, but let NewDEal control the tabs. If you need the tabs for printing from DOS or other software, one simple solution is to set up CAPTURE to map LPT1 to print any DOS text stuff, and to map LPT2 with the parameters that work with NewDeal. This way, when you print something simple from DOS, it will automatically go to LPT1, and when you print something from NewDeal, just send it to LPT2. The CAPTURE command allows you to set different parameters for each printer port, up to LPT3. To see the current configuration of Capture on your workstation, enter CAPTURE SHOW at the DOS prompt.

If printouts show stray characters

If your printouts are on laser printers and show stray characters, you need to use Netware's PRINTCON to modify the Print Job Configuration. Change the File Contents option to Byte Stream (rather than text) to solve the problem.

File Sharing on the Network

NewDeal software does not currently allow multiple users to access the same document file, unless that file is set to Read Only. (You can set a file to Read Only in NewManager. Click once on the file's icon, open the File menu and select Attributes.) If a user has a NewDeal document open that's not Read Only, then that document file will appear in NewManager as a non-NewDeal document with a standard DOS "8.3" filename and a standard DOS icon to other users on the network.

With NewDeal, you can use extended attributes to set a document to "Public" access. This will enable multiple users to open the document, but not save modifications to the same file name. To open the document for editing, you select the For Editing button in the Open File dialog box. In most cases, Public is a better choice for file sharing than Read Only. See your NewDeal manual for more information about file attributes.

Missing Command Interpreter, Unable to locate COMMAND.COM

If you see an error message saying something like "Bad or missing command interpreter," or "Unable to locate COMMAND.COM" when you exit your NewDeal software, there is an error in the Netware login script.

In the login script, there are lines like this:

MAP F:=DRIVE:DIR1\DIR2
which make a directory or subdirectory on the server (in this case \DIR1\DIR2) appear as a separate hard drive (in this case F:) on your workstation. The problem with this usage is that the user can back out of the selected directory (by typing CD.. at the DOS prompt, for example) all the way to the root directory of the server drive.

NewDeal automatically looks for the root directory of every drive it finds. Therefore, if your system is counting on finding COMMAND.COM, the DOS file interpreter, in a particular network directory when you exit NewDeal, it won't. It will instead be looking at the root directory of that drive.

The solution is to use the ROOT option when setting up drives in your login script. The ROOT option prevents users from backing out of the mapped directory. (The ROOT option should probably be used all the time anyway, to prevent users from accessing the root directory). The equivalent command to the above, using ROOT, would be as follows:

MAP ROOT F:=DRIVE:DIR1\DIR2
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Last Modified 17 Feb 1999