Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] Problems sending binary data to parrallel port postscript printer
From: David Foster (dfoster@panix.com)
Date: Mon Feb 16 1998 - 04:36:11 EST
At 07:37 PM 2/16/98 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi I'm desperate,
> this must be a common problem, but I can't find a reference to it anywhere.
>Anyway the situation is
>Macs running Laserwriter 8.5.1 printing images from photoshop via netatalk to
>a Linux (Red Hat 4.2) or FreeBSD (2.2.5) box with a Tektronix Phaser IIIPXi
>printer connected via a parrallel port. Spooling works fine (the whole idea
>of doing it was to get the printer off localtalk). Printing files with only
>ascii in them works fine, printing images (which are binary encoded) causes
>the printer to choke..
>
this is indeed an old problem, but I've never seen an adequate solution.
There's
two different ways to encode binary postscript, Macs use one way, and almost
everyone else uses the other. Many printers thus assume that if the jobs
coming
over an appletalk port, then it must be encoded in the Mac way, and if it's
coming
over a parallel port, then it's encoded in the PC way.
It's all pretty dependent on what you're printing, some can run for years
without ever
hitting a problem, others hit the problem right away.
Some printers let you configure this, but most don't. As you've seen,
ascii postscript
files work fine, if you can get folks to stick to them. Someplace there
must be a "standard
protocol to tagged binary" filter.
>printing images to a file and encoding as ascii then "cat"ing to the printer
>port also works fine. Reading the documentation it seems as though there
>should be no problem with parallel ports...
However you're encoding them as ascii, why don't you set that up as a
filter on the printer
port? This isn't a problem with the port itself, it's just in the nature
of postscript printers.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sat Dec 18 1999 - 16:30:55 EST