topic Re: Printing in Operating System - HP-UX

Printing

Chad Holcutt — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:05:05 GMT

Hi:

A co-worker suggested that I post my question here. I have been given the job of converting our very plain invoices into something more elaborate like different fonts, different colors, and lines and boxes. Do I need to install a new driver?

Thank you,
Chad

Re: Printing

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:07:57 GMT

You may not only need a new driver but a new car as well (or possibly a new programmer). First of all, is this even a UNIX question? What kind of printer? You should note that print formatting under UNIX is the sole responsibility of the application and there are no printer drivers as such. That concept belongs to a different OS.

Re: Printing

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:15:57 GMT

It would also be helpful to know if you have access to the source code, and if so, what language? When you leave out these minor little details, it makes it rather difficult to help you.

Re: Printing

Chad Holcutt — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:28:33 GMT

Hi:

Thanks for the response. Yes, this is an application that runs on hpux 11i. We are using a color laserjet 4550 but this application only prints in black and white. We don't have the source for this application but we can print to a file. I'm hoping that there is some way to run this file through a script or something to make the output more elaborate and then send it to the printer. The developer wants about $12,500 to do these changes.

Thank you,
Chad

Re: Printing

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:34:30 GMT

Well, the least-evil product I've found, by far, is a product called UnForm. www.unform.com

It's not free but it's way cheaper than $12.5K. It's also going to be a good bit of work on your part but I've turned plain vanilla text output into amazing documents (logos, duplex printing, colors, ...) with it. Tell John I sent you.

Re: Printing

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:42:18 GMT

I suppose that I should at least explain the basic concept to you. Unform examines your input file for patterns (e.g. "Mickey Mouse Invoice" on line 5 and and date at column 60, line 10). When it finds a matching pattern, it applies a set of "rules" that transform your input text. You can erase characters; store them in a variable, and the output them elsewhere. Essentially, this can be as complex or as simple as you can make it. The basic programming is done in BASIC and it is one of the pickiest parsers I have even seen and the error messages are less than explicit but the product does work.

When I first tackled UnForm, I chose the most complex document first thinking that if I could do it, I could do anything. That was a big mistake and I would do many things differently now. Start with a simple report and work towards the more complex.

If UnForm does not find any patterns that it recognizes then the input is simply written to the output.

Re: Printing

Chad Holcutt — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:20:27 GMT

Hi:

We installed the demo version of unform on our rp5450. The sample outputs look great! My manager is very pleased with the look of these reports.

Thank you,
Chad

Re: Printing

A. Clay Stephenson — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:29:42 GMT

Good for you but the real thing is going to be a tad more difficult than the samples. The sample rule files do serve as a good starting point for ideas.

If memory serves, the demo will run for 30 days so that should give you plenty of time to see if UnForm is a good fit for your application. I find the most seamless integration is to add UnForm to the lp subsystem. My convention is that UnForm printers begin with "u" so that myprinter is a standard printer and umyprinter sends its input to UnForm which acts as a filter. It's a rather simple modification to the printers interface file.