Re: tlug: HP Laserjet 4LJ

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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>>>>> "Totoro" == Totoro  <riley@example.com> writes:

    >> On Mon, Apr 07, 1997 at 05:26:22PM +0900, Totoro wrote:
    >>> Anyone know how to get a beast like this to print under RHL
    >>> 4.1?

    >>> I've not been able to get anything other than ascii out of it,
    >>> not counting lots of pages of un-interpreted postscript files!
    >>> I've been trying apsfilter-491. Is there something locally in
    >>> Japan that will run this printer? TIA!

    >> I'm not familiar with apsfilter... but isn't that for the other
    >> direction?  Taking plain ASCII and turning it into PostScript?

    Totoro> It's supposed to take the various filters that are in the
    Totoro> system (dvi, gs, etc.) and make them work for the given
    Totoro> printer. Seems to me that HP-Japan altered something in
    Totoro> the printer to make it not work as a US-model would.

My first guess is that the problem is apsfilter.  Configuring filters
is hard, and tends to conflict with the other aspects of setting up
the printer.

(1) Apparently you can send CRLF-delimited ASCII to the printer (`lpr
    junk.txt') and get what you expect.  True?
(2) Do you have any programs that write PCL files natively?  Maybe you
    can import a printer iamge file from a Windwoes system or something.
    Try that.
(3) gs -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=test.lj -sDEVICE=laserjet test.ps -c quit;
    lpr -s test.lj
    should work (on any laserjet).
(4) gs -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=test.lj -sDEVICE=ljet4 test.ps -c quit;
    lpr -s test.lj
    should also work (with LJ4 optimizations).

If you can do all that, then the problem isn't the printer, it's the
filter configuration.

Note that I'm actually writing a temporary file before spooling to the
printer.  I have had trouble getting GS to work correctly as a filter.
Since printing Japanese is  v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w  in any case, I am happy
enough with the temp file solution.  Note that these files, especially
for Japanese, can be huge, and lpr is very likely to refuse to copy
the spool file.  This is not a big deal, you just use the symlink
option as above, but don't delete the file before it finishes printing!

HTH

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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