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><A
NAME="WINPRINTERS"
>12. Windows-only printers</A
></H1
><A
NAME="AEN2645"
></A
><P
> As I discussed earlier, some printers are inherently unsupported
because they don't speak a normal printer language, instead using
the computer's CPU to render a bitmap which is then piped to the
printer at a fixed speed. In a few cases, these printers also
speak something normal like PCL, but often they do not. In some
(really low-end) cases, the printer doesn't even use a normal
parallel connection but relies on the vendor's driver to emulate
what should be hardware behaviour (most importantly flow control).
</P
><P
> In any case, there are a few possible workarounds if you find
yourself stuck with such a lemon.
</P
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><H2
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><A
NAME="GS-WIN-REDIRECTOR"
>12.1. The Ghostscript Windows redirector</A
></H2
><P
> There is now a Ghostscript printer driver available (called
<B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>mswinpr2</B
>) that will print using Windows GDI
calls. There is also a port redirection tool called
<B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>redmon</B
> which will run a print job through
Ghostscript before finally printing it. (Rather like an
<TT
CLASS="OPTION"
>if</TT
> filter in Unix's LPD). Taken all together,
this allows a Windows machine to print PostScript to a
Windows-only printer through the vendor's driver.
</P
><P
> If you have a host-based printer that can't be used directly, you
can export it as a "Postscript" printer by using redmon,
Ghostscript, and mswinpr2 on a Windows PC and print through the
vendor's drivers.
</P
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><H2
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><A
NAME="HP-WINPRINTERS"
>12.2. HP Winprinters</A
></H2
><P
> Some HP printers use "Printing Performance Architecture"
(marketingspeak for "we were too cheap to implement PCL"). This
is supported in a roundabout way via the pbm2ppa translator
written by Tim Norman. Basically, you use ghostscript to render
PostScript into a bitmapped image in pbm format and then use
pbm2ppa to translate this into a printer-specific ppa format
bitmap ready to be dumped to the printer. This program may also
come in ghostscript driver format by now.
</P
><P
> The ppa software can be had from <A
HREF="http://www.rpi.edu/~normat/technical/ppa/"
TARGET="_top"
>the ppa home
page</A
>; pbm2ppa supports some models of the HP 720, 820,
and 1000; read the documentation that comes with the package for
more details on ppa printer support.
</P
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><H2
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><A
NAME="LEX-WINPRINTERS"
>12.3. Lexmark Winprinters</A
></H2
><P
> Most of the cheap Lexmark inkjets use a proprietary language and
are therefore Winprinters. However, Henryk Paluch has written a
program which can print on a Lexmark 7000. Hopefully he'll be
able to figure out color and expand support to other Lexmark
inkjets. See <A
HREF="http://bimbo.fjfi.cvut.cz/~paluch/l7kdriver/"
TARGET="_top"
>here</A
>
for more info.
</P
><P
> Similarly, there are now drivers for the 5700, 1000, 1100, 2070,
3200, and others. See the supported printers listing above, and
my web site, for more information on obtaining these drivers.
</P
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