Import Filters for ESC/P(2), PCL, etc.

[Michael Leimann]

Hi everybody!

Due to my enquiry in cups.general "Conversion of Printstream from Epson (ESC/P, ESC/P2), IBM Proprinter, NEC Pinwriter", see

http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?s19666+gcups.general+v19678+T0

I got in contact with David Chappell at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, who has developed the PPR (Page Printer Spooler), see

http://ppr.trincoll.edu

I found that his system (which is currently a little frozen), supports some interesting filters that allow to convert printstreams such as ESC/P or PCL to PostScript, see

http://ppr.trincoll.edu/ppr-doc-1.51/refman/ppr-filters.1.html

My question to him was:

"Could I use the filter only to do the conversion from ESC/P(2) to PostScript?"

So he replied:

"Do you mean, can the filter be adapted to work with CUPS?

Yes, I am sure it can. Â PPR filters work a little differently from CUPS
filters. Â The chief differences are:

* They receive options differently
* They can expect that the spooler will insert resources such as
procedure sets and fonts
* They can expect that the input will be seekable (a file, not a pipe)

One way you could do this is by writing a program (such as a Perl
script) which did this:
1) Copy stdin into a temporary file
2) Run filter_dotmatrix with stdin connected to the temporary file
3) Read the output from filter_dotmatrix and copy it to stdout,
inserting resources as you go

I have not done much work on PPR lately since I have been busy with
other things. Â Maintaining it is a lot of work. Â Much of this work is
tedious since it involves keeping PPR compatibly with new printers,
application programs, and operating system subsystems such as plug-and-play.

This is unfortunate since PPR has many capabilities which do not exist
in any other spooler. Â I may try to get some of them incorporated into CUPS.

If the CUPS maintainers would like to incorporate filter_dotmatrix, I
would be willing to port it to CUPS. Â Perhaps you could discuss it with
them."

So it seems to be my challange to take CUPS 'where it had never been before' ;-).

I personally would very much like this filters to be incorporated into CUPS, but who am I?

So what do you say?

Regards

Michael