Old PS Level 1 printer not working (LaserJet 4M)

Helge Blischke h.blischke at acm.org
Sun Oct 2 10:27:45 PDT 2011


Kevin O'Gorman wrote:

> Printing seems to generate Level 2 documents, although CUPS knows this is
> a LaserJet 4M, which was never capable beyond Level 1.  I get various
> errors, but they all boil down to that.  This printer still works, and
> still prints if I send a Level 1 PS file to it, or have enscript(1) do so.
> 
> I have no idea how to get cups to produce level 1 output.
> 
> Help?

Well, the PostScript level output depends on the input format and the setup 
of the respective filters. E.g. when printing PDF, most of the used pdftops 
filters generate level 2 PostScript, and AFAIK there is no job attribute to 
force level 1.
I'd suggest to set up a filter script (as a shell or Perl or Python script), 
say yourfilter, which calls Ghostscript with the options
-sDEVICE=pswrite -dLanguageLevel=1
and force using of this filter for the 4M by inserting the line
*cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-postscript 0 yourfilter"
But note that this will convert embedded fonts as bitmapped Type3 fonts, so 
you need to specify the printer's resolution using the -r switch for 
Ghostscript.

Helge





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