Windows 10 SCO Filepro issue
Brian White
bw.aljex at gmail.com
Wed Oct 31 22:59:41 PDT 2018
Absolutely. What Bob & Mark said.
Filepro is being told to send print data to the terminal, "in-band", via
passthrough-print terminal control codes, in both cases. There is no
question about that (now).
So now it's no mystery at all that the Win10 box behaves differentlu. Any
two machines, regardless of OS or terminal software could do entirely
different things with that print data, all depending on the configuration
of the terminal emulator app, and the capabilities and confinguration of
the printer driver in the client/desktop OS. Even two identical Win7
machines would behave different if you had installed different printer
drivers on each.
In this case, the next thing to look at is, in the terminal emulator on the
Win10 box, what printer is it configured to use? Is that printer capable of
interpreting pcl5? Does it even let you specify a printer or is it just
using whatever is the Windows default printer?
What is the name of the printer driver used for that same printer on the
Win7 boxes? What is the name of the printer driver for that printer on the
Win10 box? I bet one or the other names will be enlightening.
(I'm not sure where to find the name of an installed printer driver in each
OS off-hand, sorry. I know there is a name you can see when you are
selecting a driver to install in the first place, and for HP there is
sometimes 2 or 3 variants, and the name will include (PCL5) or (PCL6) or
(PS) or something else. Not always but often. It's just a thing HP does.
And, the same choices might not be available for Win10 vs Win7 vs any other
OS. Maybe HP made a pcl5 driver for win7 and never made one for win10. Just
like they probably didn't make any driver at all for XP if it's a recent
printer. They don't necessarily offer the same of everything for every OS.
Or maybe you have some older generic laserjet driver installed on the win7
machines instead of one specifically for this exact model, and on the win10
box you have a new official normal proper driver for this printer
specifically.
There's all kinds of different ways to get different results on different
clients, now that we know it IS in fact printing through the client.
But on the flip side, now that we do know that, we also know what you need
to look at in order to make it do what you want.
You can investigate possible raw print data options in the printer driver
and/or in the windows print spooler (assuming the printer actually supports
pcl5 instead of getting fake pcl5 support via the printer driver doing it
on the sly).
You can look into possible variant versions of the printer driver that
might provide that pcl5 support.
You might also try installing some old generic plain laserjet driver, like
a windows built-in lj5 driver. It could be an extra driver pointing to the
same printer just for the terminal emulator to use, and the other apps on
the desktop can still use the official driver.
You can comment out PFPT in .profile and not even use passthrough. Then H
hardcopy would go directly from the fp binary to the command shown in
printer8, without going through the Win10 box.
You can use a different emulator that has it's own pcl renderer for
passthrough printing, since one happens to exist. (anziowin)
Mostly repeating what I already said, sorry.
--
bkw
On Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 9:52 PM Bob Rasmussen via Filepro-list <
filepro-list at lists.celestial.com wrote:
> Rod: see my last response to Fairlight. Different printer driver used in
> Windows.
>
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2018, Rod Caddy via Filepro-list wrote:
>
> > On 10/31/2018 7:48 PM, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> >> Yeah, but what's weird then is the claim that Win7's attempts go out the
> >> system printer, rather than pass-through. If both are set to PFPT=on,
> then
> >> why would they act differently on the same software?
> >>
> >> I suspect we haven't seen everything. Primarily differences in client
> >> configurations, as I alluded to last night.
> >>
> >> m->
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 08:12:44PM -0400, Brian White via Filepro-list
> thus
> >> spoke:
> >>> Good grief... after all this time, I finally look at the png screen
> >>> captures, and instantly what do I see? A variable that controls
> filepro's
> >>> behavior exactly as I said since the beginning. PFPT=on tell fp
> binaries
> >>> to
> >>> try to use pathrough printing, by default, if possible. Both clients
> are
> >>> setting PFPT=on, both clients are setting TERM=scoansi.
> >>>
> >>> For passthrough printing from filepro to work, several things must all
> be:
> >>> * The termcap entry that matches $TERM must include PN and PS caps
> which
> >>> work on that terminal. In filepro, the termcap entry is built up from
> two
> >>> files, /etc/termcap and $PFDATA/$PFDIR/fp/termcap (or could also be
> >>> specified entirely in an environment variable $TERMCAP which overrides
> the
> >>> termcap files)
> >>>
> >>> * The terminal must actually recognize those escape codes from the PN
> and
> >>> PS termcap caps, and do something with the data collected in between
> the
> >>> printer-on and printer-off codes. IE, if the terminal software has a
> >>> config
> >>> option for what to do with passthrough print data, you might have to
> >>> actively configure it to say what printer it should send the print
> data
> >>> to,
> >>> else it might simply eat the data and do nothing with it.
> >>>
> >>> * The destination that the terminal software sends the data to, must be
> >>> able to make sense of PCL5 data. There are a few different ways to
> arrange
> >>> this. Sometimes there is an option you can set in the printer driver
> >>> properties that says not to mess with the data, just forward it to the
> >>> printer raw. That would/should work as long as the printer itself
> actually
> >>> understands pcl5. Today, many don't. HP in particular confuses things
> even
> >>> more by having printer drivers that sometimes silently translate pcl5
> from
> >>> an application into pcl6 for the printer, making you think the printer
> >>> supports pcl5 when it really doesn't. In the case of HP, try to look
> for
> >>> alternative versions of the printer driver, with PCL or PCL5 in the
> >>> driver's name. Remove the currently installed driver and install that
> >>> alternative, and that *might* make passthrough printing from filepro
> >>> through that terminal start working. Alternatively, if the "terminal
> >>> software" is AnzioWin, it has it's own built-in pcl interpreter, and
> >>> should
> >>> always work with any printer that any other Windows app can print to,
> >>> since
> >>> it interprets the pcl itself and renders it as graphics and hands the
> >>> bitmap data to windows's native gdi printing interface for windows to
> >>> print, without caring what kind of printer you have as long as you
> have a
> >>> working windows driver for it, the same as any other windows app does.
> >>>
> >>> You could also try removing PFPT=on from the envirnment, which will
> cause
> >>> H
> >>> hardcopy to go to whatever printer is set as default in pfconfig.
> >>>
> >>> Also verify, HOW is TERM getting set to "scoansi"? (and how is PFPT
> >>> getting
> >>> set to on?)
> >>> Is it being hard-coded in .profile or /etc/profile? Or is it coming
> from
> >>> the terminal emulator?
> >>> What I'm getting at is, are both terminal client apps really
> configured to
> >>> emulate sco-ansi?
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> bkw
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 1:15 PM Rod Caddy via Filepro-list <
> >>> filepro-list at lists.celestial.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> snip
> >
> > That's my point they are exactly the same piece of software and the same
> > settings.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Pro-Set Systems Logo <www.pro-set.com> Rod Caddy
> > Pro-Set Systems
> > rcaddy at pro-set.com
> > The information in this e-mail is confidential and may be privileged. If
> > you are not the intended recipient, please destroy this e-mail and
> > notify the sender immediately. You should not retain, copy, distribute
> > or use this e-mail for any purpose, nor disclose any of its contents to
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>
> Regards,
> ....Bob Rasmussen, President, Rasmussen Software, Inc.
>
> personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
> company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
> voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
> fax: (US) 503-624-0760
> web: http://www.anzio.com
> street address: Rasmussen Software, Inc.
> 10240 SW Nimbus, Suite L9
> Portland, OR 97223 USA
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