CUPS 1.4.3 && printing UTF-8 text

Helge Blischke h.blischke at acm.org
Tue Jul 12 12:55:12 PDT 2011


Helge Blischke wrote:

> Matthias Apitz wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> > The way generating PCL from the big Postscript file, using
>>> > Ghostscript' driver ljet4, works fine; the resulting file is only
>>> > around 64 Kbyte (and not 1 MByte Postscript) for a single half page;
>>> > the PCL prints fine on HP LaserJet models, but not on some Kyocera
>>> > Mita FS1010, which are attached on USB to Windows PC's and controlled
>>> > by some kind of Windows spooling software (in CUPS they are configured
>>> > as socket:/.... using a Generic PCL driver);
>>> >
>>> > I know that is now already far of topic, but maybe someone has an idea
>>> > were to look, because the customer has around 70 of these old printers
>>> > and awaits that they work with Unicode as they did before with ISO
>>> > 8859-1 printing.
>>> >
>>> > Thanks in advance
>>> >
>>> >     matthias
>>>
>>> See
>>> http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Kyocera/Kyocera-FS-1010
>>> Kyocera's website states that this printer speaks pcl as well.
>>>
>> 
>> Yes, I have checked the page before and tested in Ghostscript all the
>> mentioned drivers 'ljet4', 'ljet4d' and 'pxlmono'; the PCL output is just
>> not understood by the printer or is mangled by the Windows spooler sw
>> before it goes to the printer itself; I have asked the customer to
>> provide me one of the printers and the spooling software and will check
>> in detail (for example connecting the USB printer directly a UNIX running
>> CUPS) what's going on;
>> 
>> thanks as well for your other hints; I will see what I can drain from
>> them;
>> 
>>    matthias
> 
> Well, if the printers in question are hooked to Windows boxes, they
> probably are configured to speak Kyocera's PRESCRIBE language.
> 
> It is certainly possible to write a filter which converts PostScript (to
> be precise: mime type application:/vnd.cups-postscript) to Prescribe, but
> as this is
> (1) a fairly exotic thing which certainly won't gain wide spreading,
> and
> (2) would take at least 3 to 4 weeks of work for a first implementation,
> I think it is too big a task for an ad-hoc open source project.
> But, if your customer heavily relies on such a thing, I could think about
> implementing such a beast for a reasonable fee.
> 
> Helge

Well, when using Ghostscript to rasterize the pages to e.g. TIFF images and 
then encapulating the images by appropriate Prescribe commands, the effort 
would shrink to a couple of days only.

Helge





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