Printer - HP LaserJet 3600

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 10:27 PM
Subject: Re: Printer - HP LaserJet 3600


> On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 12:46:59PM -0800, Jim Asman wrote:
>> The HP 2550 color laser is PCL6 only. I see all kinds of comments about
>> this or that not working properly with a PCL6 printer, and the typical
>> response is to change to a PCL5 driver. Good advice if the printer 
>> supports
>> PCL5, but in the NEW reality...
>
> Ok, clarification time: PCL6 is *not* a strict superset of PCL5?

You got it.

PCL6 is nothing like pcl5 and below.
It's also called pcl-x, pclxl, and pxl
It's a binary format.
It's not a secret like the various ink jets.
HP has sample unix code on their web site (buried, not easy to find, but 
freely available), and ghostscript knows how to generate it.
But it's still not possible to send traditional embedded codes like 
epson/ibmpro dot matrix, esc/P2, pcl1-pcl5*,

Strictly speaking you _can_ print pcl6 on most unii by virtue of 
ghostscript.
And you could make embeddable codes, and so a filepro a print code table, by 
virtueof enscript.
So you could make a enscript print code tables, and a printer interface 
script that pipes through enscript to produce postscript, and then into 
ghostscript, using the pxlmono or pxlcolor drivers, and then to the pcl6 
printer.

Someone on the list has even created an enscript print code table a few 
years ago too and shared it with us.
I can probably dig up my (old, untouch, never used, never improved) copy if 
this post doesn't produce a newer and better one from someone.

But in real life, can you say, um, no thanks I'll stick to 2-5 K per page 
and no cpu load squirting it unaltered at printers?

Various versions of sco and various version of gwxlibs and various versions 
of maintenance packs, not to mention skunkware, provide various versions of 
gs for open server 5.
I don't know what drivers the various available versions have in them. I do 
know that I built afpl-gs-8.51 and it includes pxlmono & pxlcolor in case 
anyones interested after reading the above.
http://www.aljex.com/bkw/sco/#gs
The source is included, perforce, and in there is a readme.sco so you could 
build it yourself too.

This is not to be confused with ghostpcl, whose main executable file is 
named "pcl6" for reasons I don't know, which is also available at the above 
web page.
I think because it can read pcl6/pxl as well as pcl5 & below and produces 
postscript & pdf.

Enscript is available in skunkware, and old as that copy is it appears to be 
the latest version, unless you want to count a spin-off gnu version 
"genscript" that I'm not convinced is all that official.
I'm building that version now just for kicks. It may be up on that page by 
the time you read this.

There is also a2ps

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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filePro  BBx    Linux  SCO  FreeBSD    #callahans  Satriani  Filk!