Making Laser Printer Overlays

[Mike Schwartz]

Howie [howiewz at beonthenet.com]Said:

>A number of people have expressed interest in the MSDOS freeware Make
Overlay program that I mentioned.

>Here is a link to download it:
http://www.photobuff.com/attachments/mkovl.zip

> It converts files that you generate using an HP laser printer and a "print
to disk" operation into printer overlay files.

    A customer has asked me if I could change some info on their letterheads
and then make new laser printer overlays for them.  I'm just starting to dig
into this.  I have Jim Asman's mkpcl program, and I found some emails from
Howie and others from several years ago that explain how to make and use
overlays.  I have used Jim's code to create PCL images, but I've never
converted them to overlays.

    A quick web search located some other tools, such as:
http://www.hamil.org/pcl/ but everything I could find either was an old DOS
tool or required compiling "C" code on a Unix system.  

     Maybe these old DOS EXE's will work OK, and I suppose I could find a
Unix box where I could compile Kevin Smith's "C" code, but before I go
through a lot of work, I would appreciate any suggestions I could get from
those of you who create laser overlays on a regular basis.  (I am starting
to understand what needs to be done, but I want to make sure I'm not
overlooking any tools that could make this job a lot easier to do.)

     Apparently the guy who created the original letterheads made about a
dozen of forms that are loaded as different macros in the printers.  I was
hoping there was some kind of visual tool that would easily allow me to
manage all the macros/forms inside a laser printer (typically HP 4200's).

Thanks!

Mike Schwartz