On Thursday 01 Sep 2005 2:29 pm, Rajen M. Parekh wrote: > For more detailed > instructions, search our list archives and you will find one which I > had posted in reply to your query at that time....... I don't > remember when exactly was that.
10th december 2004 and well worth repeating: This reply is probably late, but I hope it will still be helpful. First of all I am assuming that the printer in question here is a Epson LX 300 Dot Matrix printer. Before I begin I suggest that you go through our lug mail archive, because a few months back I had replied to somebody regarding using Dot Matrix printers under Linux. Anyway, I'll explain what setup I have done for using Epson LX 300 printer with Linux. The story in short is to move away from CUPS if you want to use Dot Matrix printers with Linux. You should use LPD printer software like the excellent LPRng. Red Hat till its release 8.0 used to include LPRng, but later version deprecated the software. The reason for this would best be known by their developers. I don't want to offend anybody or start any flame war but seriously Red Hat was probably never developed for Desktops. Try something better. Try SuSE, or better, try Slackware ;-) The long story starts now. Well here is what you need to do to get your Dot Matrix printer working under Linux. First of all when using Dot Matrix printers, you should use LPD printer software like LPRng. Printing software like CUPS use postscript printing by default (try printing a simple text file with CUPS) where as LPRng prints text files in text mode. For printing files other then text files with LPRng, you need a filter program which tells LPRng to filter the file to be printed and get the desired output. If you are interested you should install a software called apsfilter. This requires you to install ghostscript and gs-fonts. These are mostly available on most of the distros. You can then easily set up your printer using the SETUP script which comes with apsfilter. Setting up a printer to work with LPRng is actually writing a correct /etc/printcap file and using the correct driver file from ghostscript. My current /etc/printcap file looks like this, lp|eps9mid;r=240x204;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\ :lp=/dev/lp0:\ :if=/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\ :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\ :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\ :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\ :mx#0:\ :sh: The only important thing above is the using the "eps9mid" printer driver and "r=240x204" resolution entry. This is included by aps-filter to specify what resolution is used. The output is excellent and you couldn't ask for anything better. I am currently using Slackware 10.0 for my office computer and all my Invoice printing (using Foxpro with DOSemu), Spreadsheet/Quotations/Letters printing (using OpenOffice), is done on Epson LX300 printer. When I was using Red Hat (the last I used was release 8.0) I was never satisfied with the printing. After I moved to SuSE and later on to Slackware, I am more then happy. -- regards kg http://www.livejournal.com/users/lawgon tally ho! http://avsap.org.in ಇಂಡ್ಲಿನಕ್ಸ வாழ்க! -- http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
