On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 22:28, Rajen M. Parekh wrote:
The long story starts now. Well here is what you need to do to get your Dot Matrix printer working under Linux. First of all when using Dot Matrix printers, you should use LPD printer software like LPRng. Printing software like CUPS use postscript printing by default (try printing a simple text file with CUPS) where as LPRng prints text files in text mode. For printing files other then text files with LPRng, you need a filter program which tells LPRng to filter the file to be printed and get the desired output. If you are interested you should install a software called apsfilter. This requires you to install ghostscript and gs-fonts. These are mostly available on most of the distros. You can then easily set up your printer using the SETUP script which comes with apsfilter. Setting up a printer to work with LPRng is actually writing a correct /etc/printcap file and using the correct driver file from ghostscript. My current /etc/printcap file looks like this,
lp|eps9mid;r=240x204;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\ :lp=/dev/lp0:\ :if=/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\ :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\ :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\ :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\ :mx#0:\ :sh:
The only important thing above is the using the "eps9mid" printer driver and "r=240x204" resolution entry. This is included by aps-filter to specify what resolution is used. The output is excellent and you couldn't ask for anything better.
Dear Rajen,
Sorry for the trouble but could you give me a step by step config method for RHEL-3? I looked up the /etc/printcap file and it has this inside... " This file was automatically generated by cupsd(8) from the # /etc/cups/printers.conf file. All changes to this file # will be lost. LX300:"
I have a2ps instead of apsfilter and it has 2 files for config..../etc/a2ps.cfg and a2ps-site.cfg They both have a long text list of 'how to and what to' but I can't figure it out. I have ghostscript already installed.
I tried your resolution setting in the printer setup driver options and set it to an available choice of 240x72 and one more thing I noticed was that the paper feed was not set to manual, which I did and also checked the option 'Prerender Postscript' and now I can print using the generic printer in OO. The OO printer did have to be setup to accept the command 'lpr -P LX300' in Generic Printer.
I am still unable to print in evolution as it does not show the printers like other programs. It only has 3 choices Create PDF, Generic Postscript and LX300. In LX300 it has only one choice of CUPs as the location, in Generic Postscript it has options file, lpr and custom. lpr does not work, custom was made lpr -P LX300 but still no result and Generic Postscript too does not work. In all the 3 cases it ejects the page and the roller rolls on for a few seconds more.
There is no copy/paste option in opened messages in evolution so I can't transfer the text to another software that will print.
Regards,
Rony.