Re: not-even-newbie printer question

[Peter Evans <peter@example.com>]

Norman Diamond on the Brother HL-1240:

> I think Windows drivers and Linux drivers can still use familiar 
> raster protocols.

The obvious thing for me to do would be to phone them and ask, but I
suppose the people manning the phone lines are instructed to answer "no"
or "don't know" to any question about Linux, for fear that they'll later
be sucked an actual techie discussion.

Stephen Turnbull: thank you, Sir, but --

> Peter> Right-ho, so I need a PostScript printer.

> No, no!  That was a joke! 

-- excuse me, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I have
either a sense of humor or a brain. Look, I may be teaching at a
university, but I'm teaching *English* at a university . . . now perhaps
you understand where I'm coming from.

No, part of the problem was that I wasn't sure what GhostScript was. I
now infer that it's a PostScript emulator, but I thought for a moment
that it was instead some sort of universal driver thingie for PostScript
(something having a similar relationship to PostScript as ASPI has to
SCSI).

> Epson and NEC are popular around Tsukuba-dai with the less
> well-heeled, going by the boxes delivered to the jimushitsu.
> Those with big budgets (and assistants to do the paperwork)
> go for FujiXerox or Ricoh multipurpose network printer/fax/
> copier/sushiya combos.

Hope these people know what they're doing. Gods know what criteria are
applied here when individuals or individual offices (rather than 情報セ
ンター) choose hardware, but the results sometimes seem potty to me --
and the hardware is anyway usually for the latest Windows (which now is
Me, which has the dubious distinction of making Win98 look like a pretty
good piece of software).

> Boot up your linux box and go "gs --help".  That will
> give a list of supported drivers built in

Yup, 'cept that I don't have a Linux box. As I've said, my need for
either (a) a new toner cartridge for my old printer, or (b) a new
printer, is more pressing (as in *this week*) than my need for Linux. I
just want to make sure that I don't spend tens of thousands of yen on
something that won't run with Linux.

Well, now that I look up "Ghostscript printing support" in *Killer Linux
for Unleashed Dummies*, I see no mention of *any* Brother printer.
What's worse, I see no explicit mention of the HPLJIIIP, though I
imagine that it's the same as the III but just slower.

> I'm pretty happy with my HP LJ6 after a year, except that this
> time of year pages and OHP film tend to stick together and come
> out in clumps.

For my LJ5L, this is a year-round phenomenon. I have to hand-feed sheets
to it, one at a time -- which actually is a marvelous idea, or at least
an idea that I'd like to press on *other* people -- and even then a
remarkable number go through at wonky angles. Anyway, the last time I
looked, HP had abandoned the reasonably-priced ("low end") laser printer
biz.

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Peter Evans peter@example.com