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




PPA Deskjets = bad
Most PCL Deskjets = good  (some even do postscript as an accessory - ie
1200C's)

The PPA printers are just like "winmodems" (softare based, etc), however
there is some limited Linux support for these beasts. Avoid them like the
plague.

The regular PCL Deskjets are hardware-based, and have been supported in
the free version of ghostscript for ages...   To my knowledge, the HP
drivers in ghostscript were written by third parties (i.e. not HP). 

The original deskjets, the 320 series, 400 series, 500 series, etc are all
PCL....  (there may be others)... 

To tell if the printer is PCL vs PPA, you would either have to read up on
them (does it say on the box?), or ensure that "DOS" is a supported
operating system (since DOS doesn't know how to "do" PPA). 

The older deskjets are generally all PCL, since PPA is a recent "thing". 

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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 |
> +----------------------------------------------------+
>  Need a new truck?  Check out my '97 Explorer 2-door
>    Sport at http://wookimus.net/~chewie/truck.html
> 
> 
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