The Concept; The Sap Systems Supported; The Device Models Supported; The Family Of Provided Device Types - Ricoh AP410i - Aficio B/W Laser Printer Manual

SAP Printing: Customer documentation: Volume 1 page 3 / 12

1. The Concept

This chapter introduces our approach to support printing to our printer devices from SAP systems (R/3, mySAP ERP).
The printer controllers of our devices support the PCL, PJL and/or PostScript printer language.
A priori, the customer can print on our devices with any suitable SAP standard device type, such as HPLJ4, as indicated in SAP note # 8928.
However, this way it is hard to activate our devices' specific features, like additional input and output trays, and finishing options, like stapling
and punching.
Alternatively, some settings could be configured on the device's front panel. This is acceptable to do for permanent changes, but not for a per-
job basis. Using the Windows driver based SWIN/SAPWIN device types has also some drawbacks.
For the above reasons, we provide a family of proprietary device types (DT).
The device types differ in the class of device models they support, the printer language they are based on, the device features supported, and
some other "DT distinctive features".
For a list of the supported device models see below.
For the definition of the DT distinctive features see below.
For a list of the supported features see the corresponding issue of Volume 2 of the documentation.
For some device models and features the degree of support may be partially limited. Those limitations can be found in Volume 3.
Each device type, as shipped, is "generic": In particular, it is independent of any specific device model.
For each device setting, the "generic" code contains initially a default command sequence, and/or is commented out.
The customer can and needs to configure the settings by himself, thus adapting the device type to the targeted device model and the intended
behavior.
The shipped device type has to be used as a template for creating the actual device types to use.
If the SAP system and the shipped Device type support POSS ("Print Options for SAPscript and SmartForms"), then the configuration of most
features can be done in each Output device, using the shipped Device type as-is.
The accompanying documentation provides the necessary detailed information to the customer, i.e. typically, the SAP administrator.
See below for the contents.
For general information about our proprietary device types, their installation and configuration, see Volume 2.
For information about a particular device type (supported features, limitations), read the corresponding issue of Volume 2.
For information about a particular device model (features, commands, limitations), read the corresponding issue of Volume 3.
For a general printing troubleshooting procedure and how to contact support, see Volume 2.

1.1 The SAP systems supported

The support is essentially platform-independent.
Explicitly supported are these Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems by SAP:
- SAP R/3 (release versions 3.0 and higher)
- SAP R/3 Enterprise
- mySAP ERP (2004 and higher)
In our documentation these are collectively referred to as "SAP systems", unless a distinction is necessary.

1.2 The Device models supported

For a list of the printer device models for which SAP printing is supported, please refer to Appendix D.
A "device class" [DCxx] groups device models which have similar behaviour with respect to SAP printing.
For information about a particular device model (features, commands, limitations):
1. Determine which device class your device model belongs to, say [DCxx].
2. Refer to the corresponding section of Volume 3 [DCxx].

1.3 The family of provided Device types

The naming of the Device types
The name of an individual member of our proprietary family of Device types reflects:
- the model controller type supported (m)
- the DT distinctive features supported (xx)
- the codepage it supports (c)