Printer - HP LaserJet 3600

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Asman" <jlasman at telus.net>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: Printer - HP LaserJet 3600


> --------------- Original Message ---------------
> At 12:31P Sat Feb 18 2006, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 08:12:26PM -0800, Jim Asman wrote:
>> > > Ok, clarification time: PCL6 is *not* a strict superset of PCL5?
>> >
>> > NOT similar at all. Not related at all.
>> >
>> > PCL6 is like assembled object code where PCL5 is interpreted escape
>> > sequences.
>> >
>> > PCL3 is a subset of PCL5, but PCL6 is "brave new world"...
>>
>> Ah.
>>
>> So, the really *important* part: do PCL 6 printers accept raw ascii
>> text and print it?
>
> Apparently, yes. But we need somebody to confirm this.
>
> A customer of mine got a color 2550 and it printed her filePro output
> in Courier, not the fancy text enjoyed on the LJ4.
>
> We need someone with a PCL6 only printer to verify this.

The Brother multifunction my customer got does not. I was on site myself, 
the printer was even hooked up via parallel, so simple dir >LPT1 tests were 
possible and no joy.
I had already tried sharing the printer via the usual protocols and it 
didn't work those ways either. Windows file/print sharing, printing to it 
via facetwin, and instaling the print services for unix on the pc and 
printing to it with rlpr. both of which I do all the time with no trouble. 
So it wasn't a problem with permissions accessing the LPT port from a 
command prompt either, which I see sometimes on XP.

I also changed the printer driver in windows from the correct brother driver 
to a stock windows built-in old hplaser driver (I think I used LaserJet II) 
and it couldn't print a test page.
Yet, pcl6 data prints fine.

This was a Brother Intellifax 4100  (PPF-4100)

It might still be possible. If the printer, or the pcl6 specification, does 
actually have any built in fonts, then maybe there is a way to send just a 
little, precompiled/saved/captured/etc pcl6 data in the form of a 
%"filename" init code, that just says "switch into mode x and load font y" 
and then you can send plain text after that until the next reset.
Or maybe the saved blob of pcl6 can include a font?

I don't know enough about the way pcl6 works but even that may not be 
possible.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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