PCL and non-PCL output to same printer?

[John MacLerran]

Dear CUPS forum members

I'm trying to find out how to configure CUPS to work properly in the following scenario:

We have a LaserJet 4300 printer connected to our Solaris server. On Solaris, we have two applications: one that sends PCL output to the printer to draw lines and boxes around its output, and another application that just sends plain text to the printer. We are using CUPS as our print spooler, and we would like to find a way to have CUPS pass the PCL output directly to the printer without modification, but have CUPS 'pretty format' the other output. Both applications are canned applications, so we can't change the way they send output.

Is this possible?  Our unix folks are not quite sure how to configure CUPS to do this. Right now, we have it set up so that the PCL output is sent directly to the printer, but it causes the non-pcl output to print the first line then go off the right-hand side of the page (or not, sometimes, it just spits out a blank page).

When we allow CUPS to 'pretty format' the output, then we get the raw PCL escape codes printed on the page, formatted and in the same font as the pretty output.

We'd appreciate any pointers, tips, tricks, or even an "it's not possible".  At least, that way we'd know it's not possible.

Thanks for your consideration.
John MacLerran
Idaho State University
macljohn at isu.edu