Need help hacking print filter.
I am printing postscript files to my HP DeskJet using printcap and a gs filter. Things work as expected, but I have several minor glitches that I can't figure out how to deal with. When I print a plain ascii file I simply cat the file to the printer. The printer defaults to high quality print mode, so to save ink I cat a set of 4 characters that push the printer into draft mode. My problem is that I can't figure out how to get the filter to prepend these characters to the front of the input stream, so all my postscript files use ink like crazy. Is there any way that I can get the characters prepended so that postscript files will print in draft mode as well? In addition I get an error message every time I print a postscript file. The message: Error: /undefinedfilename in (stcolor.ps) Operand stack: Execution stack: appears at the top of the first page (alone thankfully). Is there some way to get this error message to the null device instead of the printer? As I said these are fairly minor problems, and I'm sure HP would be happy if I couldn't reduce my ink usage, but my prospective use is going to go up so I could realy use a solution. Any ideas will be greatfully accepted. Thanks, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_-_- _-_-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (904) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Need help hacking print filter.
Dale Scheetz writes: I am printing postscript files to my HP DeskJet using printcap and a gs filter. Things work as expected, but I have several minor glitches that I can't figure out how to deal with. When I print a plain ascii file I simply cat the file to the printer. The printer defaults to high quality print mode, so to save ink I cat a set of 4 characters that push the printer into draft mode. My problem is that I can't figure out how to get the filter to prepend these characters to the front of the input stream, so all my postscript files use ink like crazy. Is there any way that I can get the characters prepended so that postscript files will print in draft mode as well? I use magicfilter but that is just the wrapper to process various input file types. For the actual ps filter I first use a program that I found on sunsite called hptools(/pub/Linux/system/printing/hptools-1.2.3.tar.gz). It has most of the esc sequences coded into the program and can either send the codes to stdout or directly to the port. Anyway for printing ps files you need to send your esc codes to a temp file then concatenate the gs output for your printer type to that same temp file and then send all that to stdout. Something like this(it may not be pretty but it works!): #!/usr/bin/tcsh # econo gs filter called as: econogs source.ps #the hptools program hpset -c econo ! /tmp/prt.$$ # send econo esc codes to tmp file # send the input file through gs and concatenate to the tmp file cat $1 | gs -q -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -r300 -sDEVICE=cdj550 -sOutputFile=- - /tmp/prt.$$ # sent the resulting file to stdout cat /tmp/prt.$$ # clean up rm /tmp/prt.$$ In addition I get an error message every time I print a postscript file. The message: Error: /undefinedfilename in (stcolor.ps) Operand stack: Execution stack: appears at the top of the first page (alone thankfully). Is there some way to get this error message to the null device instead of the printer? Well if the above is coming out on stderr then you could trap this and send to null and the other to stdout. But that is not the best solution. I am using alladin-gs and am not having any errors. I don't know what version off hand(not at my machine). Good luck. As I said these are fairly minor problems, and I'm sure HP would be happy if I couldn't reduce my ink usage, but my prospective use is going to go up so I could realy use a solution. The econo mode makes ps printing about twice as fast! Which makes it much easier to print more and waste paper... Brian Servis -- Mechanical Engineering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Purdue University http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
