Robert describes trials of getting his Apple IIf to work:
First, I think that your serial connection is probably
correct: the flashing light in response to the PostScript makes it
likely that the printer has received something that looks like
something to print. Be sure that the PostScript has a "showpage" at
the end. The first line should begin with something like
"#!PS-Adobe".
More likely, some printers require a control-D ('\004') at the
end of each "job". Try adding one to the end of the PostScript file
before you cat it:
echo -ne "\004" >> filename
Or send it directly to the port after the cat:
(cat filename; echo -ne "\004") > /dev/ttyS0
If that turns out to be the problem, then perusing the printcap and
associated filters documentation is the place to look, rather than the
serial documentation.
Some serial PostScript printers can give you direct access to
the interpreter over the serial port. I don't know about your printer
in specific. You can try using seyon, minicom, or kermit, first
figuring out how to specify that they use the appropriate serial port
and not try to initialize a modem on it. Then, according to section
2.4.4 of the old PostScript Language Reference Manual, type
"executive" followed by a retrun or newline, and you should see a
banner and a "PS>" prompt. Use full duplex, the interpreter echos.
Backspace, DEL, control-U, control-R work as expected by unix types.
Control-C "aborts the entire statement" including breaking into
current execution to get back to a prompt. The "quit" operator or
control-D will get you back out of interactive mode. If all that
works then communications are definitely working. If you want, try
something like "2 3 add print" followed by a return.
GhostScript is not a way to generate PostScript, but is
instead a way to deal with PostScript files when your printer (or
display) doesn't deal with PostScript itself. But since PostScript is
a general programming language, one can write programs in it to
convert text files into PostScript. The GhostScript package comes a
number of programs some of which may do that, perhaps suitable as lpd
filters. But the package that I've used most for converting text to
PostScript is "enscript", which, I'm pretty sure, comes on the RedHat
distributions (since my copy came in an rpm that was built on
porky.devel.redhat.com). I has a number of options for doing things
like 2 or 4 pages per page in smaller fonts. TeX, of course, can
produce PostScript output, as can Acrobat reader, and, I presume,
Star Office, Applix, WordPerfect, abbi, etc.
Bill
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