Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 18:31:42 -0600 From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1014856303.5d7360@mired.org> To: "Max Clements" <clementsm@swistgroup.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Duplex printing on an HP2200DN printer... Message-ID: <15478.58094.528486.294014@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <75192709@toto.iv>
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Max Clements <clementsm@swistgroup.com> types: > Does anyone know how to set BSD to print duplex onto an HP 2200DN laser > printer. This is a duplex-capable printer with a build in Jet Direct = > card. > As the printer is post-script capable I would not like to install = > appsfilter > or something like that, but I hate thick program listings ;-). Note that apsfilter was actually *designed* for postscript-capable printers. that's why it generates postscript for everything you send to it, including ascii text. If the printer is postscript capable, it sends the resulting postscript to the printer. Otherwise, it uses ghostscript to render the postscript for that printer. Which is why you sometimes try and print a page of text, and the printer runs out of memory trying to print the graphics image of that page. The point of apsfilter - and magicfilter, which I recommend instead - is to examin the input and turn it into something the printer can deal with, so you don't have to worry about converting your jpeg to postscript before printing it, the printer driver will do it for you. > From what little I know about HP printers I think one needs to send a = > PJL > command to the printer prior to the job to put it into duplex mode? That's certainly one way to do it. You can also send it Postscript that looks like this: <</Duplex true /Tumble false>> setpagedevice The catch is that I've not been able to find a sane way to set up lpd to make it easy to specify which duplex mode to use at print time. cups can apparently do that for you, but the demo version in the ports tree didn't have support for my printer, so I can't verify that. What I wound up doing was installing magicfilter - which does what apsfilter does, only it's lightweight and more flexible - to deal with text and raw postscript by making it look like it came from a DOS system, added a second termcap entry that doesn't use magicfilter, and set the printer to duplex without tumbling by default. Good graphics programs know how to control the duplex on a postscript device, and I point those at the second termcap entry and set duplex with their print control. Most printing goes to the one with magicfilter. Every once and a while I have to toggle the duplex or tumble options by hand. For letters, CD labels and the like I use custom scripts that sets manual feed, input source, and duplex properly. The other alternative involved creating something like 12 printcap entries to specify all those things, and it didn't seem to be worth the trouble. I've been considering tweaking magicfilter to use the job class to add rules that are only checked if the job is in that class, but haven't actually done anything about it. Apparently apsfilter already supports this, so you may want to look into that anyway. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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