printing outside browser cuts off top and bottom of page

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:27:20 -0600, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> Is there much I'd need to know about apsfilter to use it with lpd? 

No, just make sure to compile it with options

	PAGE=A4
	PAPERSIZE=a4
	A4=yes

in /etc/make.conf if you need ISO A4 support. It is basically
dialog-driven (/usr/local/share/apsfilter/SETUP) and self-explaining.
Just select printer name, connection, paper, and quality. If you
want to add specific GS options (it uses Ghostscript to convert
PS into printer languages, such as PCL), you can do this via an
easy configuration file, e. g. that's the way I got my duplexer
working correctly.



> It
> seems to just be a filter used to process input and dump output, probably
> used in combination with lpr via pipes -- am I wrong about that? 

That's right; in /etc/printcap, there are references to apsfilter
only; here's an example:

	Laserjet|ljet4d;r=600x600;q=high;c=full;p=a4;m=auto:\
	    :lp=/dev/lpt0:\
	    :if=/usr/local/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
	    :sd=/var/spool/lpd/Laserjet:\
	    :lf=/var/spool/lpd/Laserjet/log:\
	    :af=/var/spool/lpd/Laserjet/acct:\
	    :mx#0:\
	    :sh:

This is created by the apsfilter SETUP program, so no need to deal
with this manually (but you CAN if you want to); apsfilter keeps its
config in /usr/local/etc/apsfilter. To extent the example started,
I have /usr/local/etc/apsfilter/Laserjet/apsfilterrc:

	PRINTER='ljet4d'
	PAPERSIZE='a4'
	METHOD='auto'
	QUALITY='high'
	COLOR='full'
	RESOLUTION='600x600'
	INTERFACE='parallel'
	GS_FEATURES='-q -dBATCH -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPARANOIDSAFER -dQUIET
		-dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=ijs -sIjsServer=hpijs 
		-sDeviceManufacturer="HEWLETT-PACKARD" 
		-sDeviceModel="HP LaserJet" -dDuplex=true 
		-dIjsUseOutputFD -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r600'
	HARDWARE_DUPLEX=set
	DUPLEX=duplex

It's basically a repeatition from /etc/printcap so the filters used
by apsfilter itself can be properly configured. A central file is
also present as /usr/local/etc/apsfilter/apsfilterrc where you can
configure recoders, filters, pretty printing and other stuff, e. g.
you can just

	% lpr foo.png

to print a picture, or

	% grep "void" bar.c | lpr

to get some "stylish" pretty printed output. (By the way, I did switch
that off as it de-arranges source code.)



> If
> that's the case, I'm sure it would be pretty straightforward.

It's a quite old program complex, but yes - it never failed on getting
my old printers working that CUPS didn't even support. Just try to
add a parallel printer with CUPS that is currently *not* connected
and therefore *not* online. :-)



> I was not entirely sure before today whether the 4050N could handle
> straight PostScript instead of PCL, but the test I performed using nc to
> see if it would print properly involved using pdf2ps and no other file
> format transformations, so it seems PS is fine in this case. 

If PS is fast enough - use it, and get rid of the overhead bloat.
In my case, I intendedly wanted to use PCL as PS works, but is too
slow in comparison to PCL.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...