Can I get a DeskJet 842C to sign a letter from filePro?

Wed May 16 15:16:04 PDT 2007

http://nj2.aljex.com/bkw/jra/

see sig.pcl and sig-u.pcl

sig-pcl
created all from windows

I used right-click, save target as... to download the file without quicktime

I used gimp for windows to open the tiff
gimp gave a warning during open that I never saw before, something unusual 
about the alpha channel, which this image doesn't need any alpha channel 
anyways.
The image did load up ok though.

In gimp I:
* cleaned up a few scanning smudges
* converted from rgb to greyscale (results in fewer colors used and smaller 
image filesize later)
* saved as pcx

I used the windows version of mkpcl thusly: (the linux or unix ones work the 
same)
mkpcl -c 2 -r 300 sig.pcx sig.pcl

-r300 is the default I think so was probably not necessary
-c2 (compression level 2) I have found to produce practically identical size 
output, yet more printers accept it.
I had a printer here & there (very rarely) that would barf on -c4
all 4 -c levels produce different looking dither patterns in grey areas, 
sometimes one or the other end up looking noticeably better on forms that 
have large solid areas of a singl shade of grey.

total time to make the pcl and ftp it to a linux box and test print it to a 
laser via netcat and via lp -d ... -o raw
15 minutes.

another 15 just to write this mail and place the files where you can get 
them etc.. :)

--------

sig-u.pcl
a grand total of 3 commands and 1 minute purely from sco unix:
granted, in this case I have a head start that gimp warned me about an alpha 
channel, so I know to use -monochrome to strip out the alpha channel
I usually use it anyways for the same reason as I converted to greyscale in 
gimp. Plain old efficiency. b&w lasers do not benefit much from 24bpp color 
pixels.

wget http://images.baylink.com/jra/nickolaus-sig.tif
convert -monochrome nickolaus-sig.tiff sig-u.pcx
mkpcl -c 2 -r 300 sig-u.pcx sig-u.pcl

--------

We use mkpcl a lot and this is why.
Nice util Jim.

all-in-one gimp installer for windows, including lzw and gtk libraries I 
made with winrar and a batch file
http://www.aljex.com/misc/gimp223.exe

ImageMagick (convert) for sco open server (linux you just get from your 
package manager of choie)
http://www.aljex.com/bkw/sco/#ImageMagick

mkpcl you get from Jim for windows, sco, linux.

Convert on linux had no problem with the tif but I just don't seem to happen 
to have a linux mkpcl so thats why the unix example was sco unix.

You should probably scale the image a little with mkpcl or convert or 
manually. It looks a tad big to me but obviously thats a detail you would 
know better about.

Brian K. White    brian at aljex.com    http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro  BBx    Linux  SCO  FreeBSD    #callahans  Satriani  Filk!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: Can I get a DeskJet 842C to sign a letter from filePro?

> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 04:24:59PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>> > Yeah, I've replaced enough carts to know that.  The problem is that 
>> > they
>> > would use composite black when in colour mode...so if you were doing
>> > something that required any colour, the whole thing was in colour. 
>> > Just
>> > because Jay has one black cart in that doesn't mean it will be -used- 
>> > where
>> > black is required in the document, if it's in colour mode.
>>
>> I didn't realize that, and it's pretty scary.  Thanks for the heads up.
>
> Assuming I get that far.  I've scanned the signature into a 300dpi 8bit
> TIFF,
>
> http://images.baylink.com/jra/nickolaus-sig.tif
>
> and used imagemagick's convert to switch it to PCL.
>
> Pruning out some PCL commands that are not in a similar .pcl file I
> have which prints reliably, I get
>
> http://images.baylink.com/jra/nickolaus-sig.pcl
>
> or, with -black-threshold 127
>
> http://images.baylink.com/jra/nickolaus1-sig.pcl
>
> But all I get when I try to print those is a black box.  Looking at
> them with vi, if I interpret the polarity of bits in a PCL image
> correctly, that's what's *there*, and my intuition about how to
> convince convert to get it right doesn't seem productive, obviously.
>
> Jim?  How much is mkpcl?  :-)
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> -- 
> Jay R. Ashworth 
> jra at baylink.com
> Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 
> 2100
> Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 
> e24
> St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 
> 1274
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