unix compatible printers
Michael Granger
purchase the HP LaserJet 1100, but checking the SCO Compatible Hardware page
I notice that HP printers are not listed. Yet the scoadmin Printer manger
list HP printer support. Is it safe to assume that any HP printer would
work? I just had to sell my HP Deskjet 712C prrinter because I could not
get it to prrrinter under Unix or Linux. Help.
rollee
It depends on the printer's emulation. If you have a printer that emulates an
HP III, HP II, or an HP Laserjet, then you should have no problems getting it to
work with Unix or Linux. For example, I have an Okidata OL410E Laser LED
PagePrinter that emulates an HP Laserjet. I added a printer in SCO 5.05A and
used the choice offered for Laserjet. I was then able to use the printer with
no problems. However, for your own purposes, you 'may' have to modify the
interface file to fit you specific applications, such as printing landscape or
condensed, etc.
--Keith
Jeff Liebermann
<mrgr...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>I am a new unix home user running Open Server 5.0.5 at home. I intend to
>purchase the HP LaserJet 1100, but checking the SCO Compatible Hardware page
>I notice that HP printers are not listed. Yet the scoadmin Printer manger
>list HP printer support. Is it safe to assume that any HP printer would
>work? I just had to sell my HP Deskjet 712C prrinter because I could not
>get it to prrrinter under Unix or Linux. Help.
Methinks a better way to ask the question would be "Which printers are
*NOT* Unix compatible?"
Printers that will *NOT* work are those generically called
Win-printers or Windoze Only printers. These printers have
insufficient internal intelligence to print anything more complicated
than a row of vertical dots without the help of Windoze. All the
processing power is in the computer and not the printer. This makes
for a cheap printer, and in the case of complex graphics, is actually
faster than doing it all in the printer.
One way to tell is to read the specifications or printing on the box.
If it says "Windoze 95/98/NT required", you have a Win-printer.
Another way to check is to boot MSDOS and run:
dir > prn:
followed by a page eject on the printer. If it prints the directory
listing properly, it will work with Unix. If not, it's a Windoze only
printer.
--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)426-1240 fax (831)336-2558 home
http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl WB6SSY
je...@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us je...@cruzio.com
91su...@my-deja.com
plain text but not in the same way that a classic epson compatible will.
Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
windows only. I haven't tried it under sco but it works well with Linux.
Although a good laser printer that doesn't depend on software is of
course the best. -Jeff
In article <=J4MOOBnbBpCwY...@4ax.com>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Jean-Pierre Radley
| Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
| windows only.
--
JP
Jeff Liebermann
That depends on who's calling it a Windoze-only printer.
HP2000C and CN. I just ran into this nightmare. HP is really pushing
Windoze. Splattered all over the box are the "minimum requirements" which
demand Windoze 95/98/NT. No mention of DOS or text only printing
capability. See:
http://www.hp2000c.com
for the specs and details. If you grovel through this web site, all you
see is "compatible with Windoze" and not much else. How's this answer from
the FAQ at:
http://www.hp2000c.com/product/faq/operate.htm
- What Operating Systems Will the HP 2000C Printer Work With?
The HP 2000C Professional Series Color printers are compatible with
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 3.1x only.
It is not compatible with the Macintosh.
It does not support PostScript.
No information is available regarding future support of the Macintosh or
PostScript environments.
Sure sounds like a Windoze only printer.
However, the full data sheet at:
http://www.hp2000c.com/pdf/datashet.pdf
mentions MSDOS 3.3 and above compatibility, PCL3 language, and lots of
internal fonts, all of which are required to emulate a LaserJet printer.
None of this info appears on the box or the printer overview. One could
not tell that this was *NOT* a Windoze-only printer at first glance.
HP was completely useless at answering our questions on Unix setup, HPNP
setup, font numbers, and bar graph font loading. "We don't support Unix"
was the standard answer. Once we discovered that some PCL5 commands had
been added to the PCL3 commands, things started working correctly.
Incidentally, we bought 2ea HP2000CN models, which include an HP300x print
server (literally) hung on the back of the printer. It prints from the
Windoze machines and the OSR5 box without difficulty.
Warren Young
>
> 91su...@my-deja.com opined (on Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 05:18:24PM +0000):
> | Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
> | windows only.
>
> Interesting. What are some HP Windows-only printers that could be used?
Probably all of them. There's a program out there called pbm2ppa --
Ghostscript can output PBM files, and HP's WinPrinters apparently use a
format called PPA. HP wouldn't give out the specs to this, but a
self-described protocol hacker figured the format out and wrote
pbm2ppa. You can get it at http://www.httptech.com/ppa/
I have no idea if it's compatible with SCO unixes, but it works fine on
Linux. If it's at all incompatible, fixes should be easy.
--
= Warren Young: www.cyberport.com/~tangent | Yesterday it worked.
= ICBM Address: 36.8274040N, 108.0204086W, | Today it is not working.
= alt. 1714m | Windows is like that.
Jeff Martin
version without support is available as freeware and can be found on
most Linux systems. Combined with good filtering software it can really
do a lot. You might check to see if it's in skunkware for sco. The real
problem is any setup programs provided by the printer manufacturer.
-Jeff
In article <1999110317...@jpradley.jpr.com>,
Jean-Pierre Radley <j...@jpr.com> wrote:
> 91su...@my-deja.com opined (on Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 05:18:24PM
+0000):
> | Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
> | windows only.
>
> Interesting. What are some HP Windows-only printers that could be
used?
>
> --
> JP
>
--
-Jeff
Jean-Pierre Radley
| In article <1999110317...@jpradley.jpr.com>,
| Jean-Pierre Radley <j...@jpr.com> wrote:
| > 91su...@my-deja.com opined (on Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 05:18:24PM
| +0000):
| > | Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
| > | windows only.
| >
| > Interesting. What are some HP Windows-only printers that could be
| used?
|
| version without support is available as freeware and can be found on
| most Linux systems. Combined with good filtering software it can really
| do a lot. You might check to see if it's in skunkware for sco. The real
| problem is any setup programs provided by the printer manufacturer.
I compiled ghostscript 5.95 just a few days ago, and it works just fine,
but you're not answering my question, which concerned Windoze-only
printers, of which this very latest version of ghostscript makes no
mention.
--
JP
Jean-Pierre Radley
| Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:
| >
| > 91su...@my-deja.com opined (on Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 05:18:24PM +0000):
| > | Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to be
| > | windows only.
| >
| > Interesting. What are some HP Windows-only printers that could be used?
|
| Ghostscript can output PBM files, and HP's WinPrinters apparently use a
| format called PPA. HP wouldn't give out the specs to this, but a
| self-described protocol hacker figured the format out and wrote
| pbm2ppa. You can get it at http://www.httptech.com/ppa/
|
| I have no idea if it's compatible with SCO unixes, but it works fine on
| Linux. If it's at all incompatible, fixes should be easy.
I've got a file full of plain text to be printed. Ghostcript can't deal
with it, so how do I get it into ppa format?
--
JP
Brian K. White
please ghostscript prints ps, the idea is to give it ps. it's not
exactly hard...
cat textfile.txt |a2ps -q -o=- <options> |gs -q
-sDEVICE=<HPgsdrivername> -r600 -sOutputFile="-" - |lp -s
-d<HPprintername> -o,raw
could use enscript in place of a2ps (ascii to postscript), no doubt
there are more...
Warren Young
>
> Warren Young opined (on Thu, Nov 04, 1999 at 07:35:28PM -0700):
> |
> | Ghostscript can output PBM files, and HP's WinPrinters apparently use a
> | format called PPA. HP wouldn't give out the specs to this, but a
> | self-described protocol hacker figured the format out and wrote
> | pbm2ppa. You can get it at http://www.httptech.com/ppa/
> |
> | I have no idea if it's compatible with SCO unixes, but it works fine on
> | Linux. If it's at all incompatible, fixes should be easy.
>
> I've got a file full of plain text to be printed. Ghostcript can't deal
> with it, so how do I get it into ppa format?
Use one of several ASCII-to-Postscript programs, filter that through
Ghostscript to get a PBM, and then run that through pbm2ppa, all piped
through lp.
There are even packages that have all the intelligence to recognize each
type of file coming in on the print queue so they can transform them
appropriately, even to the point of recognizing things like GIF and PDF
files.
A big plus is that all of the packages of this sort that I've used are
smart enough to guess that if they can't figure out what kind of data is
coming in, that it must be native printer commands (e.g. PCL5), so they
don't touch it. That makes it possible for Unixy printing (Postscript
oriented) and Windows printing (native command set oriented) to coexist
peacefully. That's essential for a Samba/VisionFS print server that
also has local users printing.
Linux systems are getting really good about making that sort of thing
standard. If SCO doesn't (I've never set up printing with SCO
systems...) then it's not all that hard to set up.
Jeff Martin
not a classic epson printer. I used to have MagicFilter that added some
escape codes to the text to make it print using the printer's native
font. This might be a better alternative for you. I would suggest
looking for information on individual printer models. -Jeff
In article <1999110601...@jpradley.jpr.com>,
Jean-Pierre Radley <j...@jpr.com> wrote:
> Warren Young opined (on Thu, Nov 04, 1999 at 07:35:28PM -0700):
> | Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:
> | >
> | > 91su...@my-deja.com opined (on Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 05:18:24PM
+0000):
> | > | Ghostscript has support for many printers that are concidered to
be
> | > | windows only.
> | >
> | > Interesting. What are some HP Windows-only printers that could be
used?
> |
> | Probably all of them. There's a program out there called pbm2ppa --
> | Ghostscript can output PBM files, and HP's WinPrinters apparently
use a
> | format called PPA. HP wouldn't give out the specs to this, but a
> | self-described protocol hacker figured the format out and wrote
> | pbm2ppa. You can get it at http://www.httptech.com/ppa/
> |
> | I have no idea if it's compatible with SCO unixes, but it works fine
on
> | Linux. If it's at all incompatible, fixes should be easy.
>
> I've got a file full of plain text to be printed. Ghostcript can't
deal
> with it, so how do I get it into ppa format?
>