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.


 



More information about the freebsd-ports mailing list