News Group Posts

linux ghostscript postscript printing

From: Tony Lawrence <tony@aplawrence.com>
Subject: Re: linux/printer driver
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 20:00:25 GMT

Edward Jay Weiss wrote:
> I have Redhat Linux, Ver. 7, installed on my computer. I have an Epson
> Stylus, C80 printer.  When I try to print, all I get is text print
> directions, not my document.  Any suggestions ?  E.J. Weiss

Without knowing what you are seeing, I'm going to make a wild guess and 
assume you are seeing Postscript commands perhaps?

If you used the print-conf gui tool, go back into it and check your 
printer driver. It may be sending an option that Ghostscript doesn't 
recognize.  I had a similar problem with my Lasejet 6L

(from Moving from SCO to Linux)
Printing

My next task was to add a printer, using the Linux "printtool". This 
worked fine for text, but failed miserably for postscript (note when 
testing printers from printtool- if you make changes, you have to save 
them and restart lpd). That's what I have learned to expect with Linux; 
although the filters can handle this very well, there's something broken 
somewhere (at least with regard to my Laserjet 6L printer) because I 
have yet to have it work without manual editing. Actually, having the 
printer handle postscript isn't all that important to me because the 
only reason I need that is for printing from Netscape, and for that I 
can use the same "webprint" script I used on SCO:

#!/bin/bash
# webprint
gs -q -sDEVICE=ljet4 -r600 -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER 
-sOutputFile="-" - > /dev/lp0

On the other hand, I'm stubborn. It's supposed to work, so why doesn't 
it? So I followed the trail and found that "magicfilter" is what's used 
here. Great- something I know nothing about. I did find its 
configuration for Postscript printing (it's a file with a ".foo" 
extension in /var/spool/lpd/lp if your printer is named "lp"), and I 
tried adjusting it, but still couldn't get it to work right. I guess 
I'll leave that for another day. Debugging this is a pain, because the 
only way to test is to try to print a Postscript file. That generates 
reams of paper when it fails, so you have to:

     * Pull the paper from the printer (the 6L has no "off-line" switch)
     * run lpc and then "stop all" and "lprm all" (assuming no other 
jobs, of course)
     * Unplug the printer to clear the buffer
* Run "start all" and go back to debugging.

The final resoluton of this was simple: change the printer driver (in 
Printtool) to Laserjet4. The printer is a 6L, but that screws up 
Ghostscript, whereas Laserjet 4 works fine.

-- 

Tony Lawrence
SCO/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: 
Free Unix/Linux Consultants list: /consultants.html

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