Printer-PCL Compatibility

[Jean-Pierre A. Radley]

Back in January, I posted this:

> I was in the midst of printing 1099 forms from my OSR6 server, using
> filePro output involving some subtle PCL3 coding (courtesy of Jim
> Asman) to make the printed text properly nestle in the boxes of the
> IRS-designed forms one obtains from any stationer.
>
> Of a sudden, my HP OfficeJet quit, popped, turned off, dropped dead.
>
> I surprised myself with what then ensued. I used the 'pcl6' program to
> convert filePro's PCL3 output to a PDF file. I dispatched that PDF to
> my wife's Brother MFC J625DW (Windoze only) printer.  All the text was
> placed in the boxes of the 1099 forms just as precisely as it used to
> be on the OfficeJet.

'pcl6' is the (rather oddly-named) binary that ghostpdl furnishes, so
I heartily endorse what Bill Campbell has been posting: in the absence
of filePro's own PDF generation in filePro 5.7, turn the PCL3 output
produced by earlier filePro releases into a PDF document by using
pcl6.  I have found that pcl6 precisely interprets any PCL3 instruction
that I send it, including font selection, font size, bolding, color
changes, and fine control of horizontal and vertical movement; if some
adjustments are needed because of the issues mentioned by Bob Rasmussen,
I'd bet that pcl6 would handle them.

On MAC, Unix or Linux, CUPS readily handles PDF files; on Windows,
host-based printing also is happy to deal with PDF files. I would have
used CUPS in the incident cited above but no PPD files seem to exist for
the Brother MFC J625DW.

You can find pcl6forOSR5.tar.bz2 and pcl6forOSR6.tar.bz2 at ftp.jpr.com.

-- 
JP