Re: [TCLUG:7924] RE: List of Printers

[Tim Neu <tim@tneu.visi.com>]

Forgot to mention... 

The PCL Deskjets are part of the standard "printer" installation of most
Linux distributions (debian and redhat for sure)..   

Setting up a special configuration is only needed on PPA printers.

Heck, when I first ran Linux way back at kernel version 1.2.13; the
deskjet drivers were part of the free version of ghostscript then!

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On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, ^chewie wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Trainor, Kevin T. wrote:
> 
> > 	This is interesting. Not too long ago I went to the Small
> > Business Computer Expo and asked the HP reps (not just the sales
> > droids but the tech rep on site) about Linux drivers for the
> > DeskJets, and they all denied that such things existed- "but we
> > are looking into it." What's the deal? Obviously there are
> > drivers, but do you have to go find them on linux.org/Freshmeat
> > somewhere, or do most distributions have built-in modules for the
> > HP printers?
> 
> HP made a booboo.  They predicted that the HP DeskJets would only be
> purchased for home PC's that use Windows as an operating system.  They
> developed the PPA protocol, trying to provide the user a more
> hold-my-hand approach to printer management.  They assumed that anyone
> who ran Unix were using their more expensive color laser printers
> rather than the wimpy deskjets.  So, they never created the management
> tools for the HP Deskjets for Unixes.  Well, the current PPA driver
> isn't really a driver (unless you're talking about the commercial
> version of ghostscript).  The way you print to HP printers is by
> getting the PBM2PPA tool.  You will need to have the printer attached
> locally and have ghostscript (gs) installed.  The sequence of events
> for printing to the PPA DeskJets is:
> 
> 	1) Convert the document to postscript (if needed)
> 		- ascii2ps
> 		- enscript
> 		- etc...
> 	2) Convert the postscript to a PBM file
> 		- ghostscript
> 	3) Convert the PBM file to PPA and send it off to the printer.
> 
> I don't remember the site, but do a search on freshmeat for 'pbm2ppa'
> 
> Later!
> 
>     ^chewie
> 
> +----------------------------------------------------+
> | Chad Walstrom           mailto:chewie@wookimus.net | 
> | ICQ: 9985127           http://wookimus.net/~chewie |
> +----------------------------------------------------+
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