Newbie lpd printing

[Vlad D. Markov]

I can assure you that postscript printing in color is possible using any printer supported by ghostscript. Setting it up is sometimes hard.

I couldn't help but notice you said apsfilter was broken. I have used apsfilter for a very long time.
Did you setup apsfilter by running SETUP in /usr/local/share/apsfilter?

If you loaded apsfilter from ports or the packages you should have the various bits & pieces like
ghostscript, etc. If you compiled it yourself, I doubt they are.

Is this a postcript printer, a pcl printer, or a printer supported by ghostscript? For years my
printer did not have its own entry as a bjc4000 in ghostscript, I had to use the bjc600 driver.
I found the driver by querying google with "bjc400 ghostscript" - usually someone else has been
down this path before.

I suggest trying out the test page from the apsfilter setup script until you get output you
are comfortable with.

apsfilter and magicfilter are invoked from your printcap file. What happens is that you enter:
"lpr a_file" and from an entry in the printcap file the installed filter is invoked.

This is my printcap entry for apsfilter which SETUP made for me:

# APS1_BEGIN:printer1
# - don't delete start label for apsfilter printer1
# - no other printer defines between BEGIN and END LABEL
lp|bjc4000;r=300x300;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\
    :lp=:\
    :rm=snowWhite:\
    :rp=bjc4000:\
    :if=/usr/local/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
    :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
    :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\
    :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\
    :mx#0:\
    :sh:
# APS1_END - don't delete this

The "if" entry is where apsfilter is invoked.

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 21:40:12 -0700
Gary Schenk <gwschenk at socal.rr.com> wrote:

> On Friday 11 April 2003 09:21 am, Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
> > I suspect your script is broken for printing postscript files. The
> > hpif script in the handbook doesn't handle those at all, so I assume
> > you added that code.
> >
> 
> No, I did not add anything. This is the script from the handbook. I thought 
> that it was to print postscript to a non-postscript printer. It is 
> essentisally the same script as in FreeBSD Unleashed.
> 
> > Can you print postscript from the command line? If not, the KDE is
> > probably turning everything into postscript, which is then failing.
> >
> 
> I can only print text from the command line, everything else is broken.
> 
> > If you're only going to print from KDE, then fixing this script might
> > be the way to go. However, installing something like magicfilter - and
> > you've already got the hard parts done - which handles the difference
> > between postscript and flat text properly, and automatically converts
> > a number of formats to postscript for you, might be a better option if
> > you want to print regularly from the command line.
> >
> > 	<mike
> 
> The more I read about printing the more confused I get. I'd like to print 
> form a word processor, but don't seem to be able to in FreeBSD. I tried 
> installing apsfilter, but it is broken. I have no clue as to how to fix 
> it. Perhaps installing Star Office would help, and use its printer 
> interface? Or is the best solution to buy a postscript printer?
> 
> As for magicfilter, I'm still working on it. I ran make install in 
> /usr/ports/print/magicfilter. However locate magicfilter shows nothing, 
> except for the above directory. There is nothing in the /usr/local/bin 
> directory indicating anything was installed. A google search sent me to 
> http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/peripherals/printer-magicfilter.html , 
> which is for Debian Linux. It talks about running magicfilterconfig. I 
> assume there is nothing like this in FreeBSD?
> 
> Should I be content  to print only text? I talked to a friend who has been 
> running OpenBSD for three years. he only prints text. Is this common with 
> BSD? I do need to print more than plain text.
> 
> Gary Schenk
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