Virtual Printer Port?
Eugene Grosbein
eugen at grosbein.net
Tue Jul 31 11:00:19 UTC 2018
On 29.07.2018 03:28, Dan Mahoney (Gushi) wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> This may be off topic, but does anyone know a port or configuration for
> FreeBSD that can listen on a serial port and spit out a PDF? I have a
> piece of hardware (a hospital-grade pulse oximeter) that's able to talk to
> an *original* HP Thinkjet with a serial port and produce graphical charts.
> Like, the best 1993 has to offer.
>
> I'd rather simply hook up a BSD box via a serial port and translate those
> control codes into a PDF (or TIFF/PNG/postscript document). The control
> codes are pretty well documented, since you need them to make printer
> drivers, but this is the reverse use.
>
> Is there anything in ports that can do this? Is there a better mailing
> list to be asking on?
They say, HP Thinkjet used PCL1 as incoming printing language.
Basically, you need to *reverse* PCL1-render of original "document"
back to a file containg original data. This is similar to disassembly
of machine code back to program text and/or data.
I highly doubt you'll find ready-to-use "decompiler" for PCL1
and you may need to write such software yourself.
Or you can just toss received PCL1 to any modern PCL-compatible multi-functional device
to print it and scan resulting sheet back to PDF file :-)
PCL versions should be backward compatible.
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