OT - PCL5e printer language

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008, Bob Rasmussen wrote:
>On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Don Coleman wrote:
>
>> I just completed a live chat session with H-P sales.  My chat partner just
>> told me they no longer offer any LaserJets that can print from MS-DOS.  I
>> have a client with a legacy DOS application (HUD) that requires this.  I
>> noted the H-P P2015 offers PCL5e.  Was she wrong and can anyone tell me if
>> MS-DOS can print to this printer?
>
>Even if a printer can process PCL-5 (in some form), it may not have a 
>serial or parallel interface, and so there is no way to send it data from 
>a DOS application. 
>
>If you run the DOS app under Windows, and can coerce it into writing its 
>print files to disk, you can then use Print Wizard to print those files.

Locus PC-Interface handled this fairly nicely in that DOS/Windows
would spool print jobs to a directory, and PC-I would then pick
them up to send to Xenix/Unix printers.

I have implemented a similar scheme to get Tandy/RealWorld
*ix software to print checks and other forms that went to hardware
devices instead of spoolers.  I create a FIFO/Named Pipe as the
/dev entry for the forms, then have a program that continuously
reads from that named pipe to print through a spooler.  This
requires a timing check to determin when a print job is complete
after no output has appeared after N seconds as the RealWorld
software opens and closes the print file for each line of output.

Bill
-- 
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