Print file to PCL

[Bill Vermillion]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 12:23:05PM -0400, J. P. Radley thus spoke:
> Ken Brody propounded (on Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 11:31:23AM -0400):

> | Enrique Arredondo wrote:
> | [...]

> | > The thing is that the ASCII report prints already on a dot
> | > matrix printer with preprinted forms, and it's so complex,
> | > it updates so many flags , it updates so many files with
> | > YTD amounts,etc. That's it's quite impossible to re run it
> | > with the HP laser print codes. So once I have the report in
> | > ASCII I want to print it on a HP laser plain paper printer.
> | > But the only way of making it fit is by adding that code to
> | > fit on a 60 lines per page printer a 66 line report.

> | Okay...

> | Let me rephrase your original question, and see if I understand it:

> |     How do I take a plain-text file, formatted at 66 lines
> |     per page, and print it to an HP laser printer, which
> |     defaults to 60 lines per page?

> | If that's the case, then something like this would work:

> |     ( printf "escape_codes_to_set_66_line_mode" ; cat filename ) |
> |         lp -dlaser -o raw

> | Use "\033" to represent ESCape in the printf line.

> In the standard HP printer interface script from SCO, there's a note
> about an "enhancement", and it tells you to uncomment seven lines in
> order to fit 66 lines onto a standard 8.5 X 11 page.  So do that, and
> then just print the text with no special flags.

However since that change actually makes the line height just a bit
shorter than usually to get 66 lines to fit in a bit over 10 inches
of space instead of 11, he may have some slight placement problems
with lines near the top or bottom of the page if he is using a
preprinted form.

I recall one some pre-printed and badly laid out forms I would
print part of a line, and then halfway across the page either do a
short 1/2 [or less] line up or down to print, then reverse that
motion so the next line down would start on the correct part of the
page.

If he's lucky things will work just as they are, if not he still
might have to juggle some things.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com