Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] papd problem - binary postscript
From: Andras Kadinger (bandit@freeside.elte.hu)
Date: Sat May 30 1998 - 06:53:15 EDT
Sak Wathanasin wrote:
> I don't know about the parallel port PS printers, but certainly with the serial
> ports you can't send full binary because:
>
> 1) the PS interpreter uses XON/XOFF for flow-control (although you can switch
> to h/w flow-control)
>
> 2) interprets control-T as a request for printer status
>
> 3) control-C is abort
>
> 4) control-D is EOF
>
> or at least the Adobe PS does. If papd were to accept full binary in the
> in-coming stream, it has to escape the above bytes before sending them out
> through the serial port.
Adobe has created an escaping mechanism exactly for these purposes, and
named it TBCP, or Taggged Binary Control Protocol. Someone has forwarded
a tiny TBCP C source to the list about a month ago which reportedly
solved people's problems in this area.
However, Your argument is perfectly valid to the point, that there
should be a tool in the netatalk package being able to do this
conversion; although that functionality should not be in papd (which
only processes input from the Macs to the spool), but in a separate
filter which people can use in their printcap entry: someone could have
both AppleTalk and serial port printers, in which case he would only
need to convert PostScript streams going to the serial one.
Hmm, I think I will wrap that thing up with some documentation and
(after checking copyleft policy) submit it to Adrian and/or Wesley for
inclusion.
Sincerely,
Andras Kadinger
bandit@lettera.hu
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