more on FreeBSD and Brother HL-5250-DN

[Gary Kline]

	Not to bore anyone, but my finding may be of interest.
	Predrag pointed me at a Brother lpr/printcap setup for Linux--
	will wonders never cease?, :-).  The URL is

	http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html

	and had configurations (binaries, not plaintext) for Redhat 
	andDebian.  I managed to install, and thus unpack, the *deb
	(is that cpio?) on my Ubuntu desktop.  

	Very late last night it occurred to me that the reason no
	/dev/lpt0 was that my parallel cable isn't plugged into my new
	printer.  The test pages work via the cat5 <-> switch; this
	HTML helped me configure the 5250.  When I another geek over 
	here to plug things together, I'll be able to test the
	/etc/printcap.   Here it is, as auto-installed by dpkg -i::

HL5250DN:\
        :mx=0:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/HL5250DN:\
        :sh:\
        :lp=/dev/usb/lp0:\
        :if=/usr/local/Brother/lpd/filterHL5250DN:

	Most of this will port to FreeBSD easily. The Brother directory 
	is full of two subdirs each with a number of files.  The input
	filter, "filterHL5250DN" and other /bin/sh scripts in lpd/
	will take some porting.   Soooooooo: is printcap the best way to
	go?  What about IPP?   The nutshell is that I'd like to use the
	printer in the way that takes the least messing-with.  I have 
	two "desktop", BSD and Ubuntu.  I would like to make the FreeBSD
	computer my printserver ... if I can't use the 5250 as a 
	networked printer.

	Advice please!!

	gary








-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
        http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org