Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 20:51:31 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Better printing from the command-line Message-ID: <15148.3363.52861.253822@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <6147922@toto.iv>
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Philip J. Koenig <pjklist@ekahuna.com> types: > However I'd like to do some *rudimentary* jazzing up of the > printouts, ie something as simple as setting the font to 12-pitch > instead of 10-pitch so that certain manpages and text documents > don't end up with truncated lines. From the sound of things, you're talking about printing flat ascii text. Since these kinds of things aren't standardized, there really isn't a generic tool for dealing with them. I've been thinking about extending magicfilter to add the ability to specify strings to prefix a print job, which might solve this, but haven't done anything yet. Personally, I just set those the way I want them on the printer, and forget about them. > Even though I'm using the "magicfilter" port which has a specific > filter for the HP Laserjet, it doesn't appear to have any settings > which can do something as simple as change the font pitch. I hear > good things about the "APSfilter" port but that appears to require X, > which I don't usually run. apsfilter doesn't require X, but it defaults to using it if you build it interactively. Build it with "make -DWITHOUT_X11" and it won't require X. Hopefully, this will be changed in the future to default to build without X if X isn't installed. In any case, apsfilter doesn't send flat ascii text files to the printer, so things like the printers font pitch setting don't matter. It sends ascii text through a2ps, then prints the resulting postscript. This can be an expensive operation if your printer prints flat text and doesn't print postscript, and can even cause printouts to fail on some printers. That's one of the reasons I recommend magicfilter over apsfilter - magicfilter won't filter flat text through postscript unless the printer can't handle flat text. You can install the a2ps port yourself and do what apsfilter does by hand if you're happy printing flat text through postscript. I prefer enscript for this; it's also in the ports tree. Either one of them have more options than you want to worry about for how to format the text on the page. > Is there any other kind of utility with a few basic built-in switches > to do minor formatting on a Laserjet 4MPlus? This printer supports > Postscript too but it would seem simpler to just use PCL commands. I > hope I don't end up having to write my own scripts just to send > commands to the printer.. Ok, the only printer system that might do what you're thinking about is CUPS. There's a demo of that in the ports tree. It uses the printer description files that Windows uses, which tells the print system how to do all these things. You may have to purchase the commercial version to do what you want, though. <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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