Change font size of remote printer

[Fredrics]

Hi,

I have a remote printer configured with a HP-UX V2 system. The printer is connected to a network print server. The application was migrated from a Tru64 box to this server. Application team was able to change the font size to the required one while it was in Tru64 box. Since it is a remote printer, there is no option available in the interface script. I have tried specifying the font size with "-ofp" option, but getting the same printout.

Can anyone tell me how can I change the font size in this configuration.

Best regards,
Praveen

[Dennis Handly]

>The printer is connected to a network print server.

And that is Windows?

[Fredrics]

It is not a Windows box. It is a network print server (I think D-link make).

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Because it is a remote print server, all SysV spooling systems require that a remote print server process the options, whereas a BSD-based spooler pre-processes the print file with the options and sends a ready-to-print file to the print server. The -o options for the lp command will only work if the remote print server is another HP-UX box, or the printer is attached to the network with an HP JetDirect card.

If the Tru64 application performs it's own font processing, then it should work OK but if the app just relies on the lp -o options, you'll have to develop an lp wrapper which detects the required options and inserts the appropriate escape sequences into the print job, then sends the file with the lp command.

[Dennis Handly]

>Bill: the printer is attached to the network with an HP JetDirect card.

You don't think D-link is trying to pretend to be a JetDirect?

[Bill Hassell]

> Dennis: You don't think D-link is trying to pretend to be a JetDirect?

D-Link (and virtually all non-HP print servers) are running RFC 1179, the BSD lpd code which is essentially a write-only protocol. This standard does not define -o option processing (such as -olandscape, -oc, -o12, -oduplex, etc.

The JetDirect protocol is bidirectional and can read status and other details back from the printer. It uses ports 9100 through 9102 and with the primary printing program hpnpf, appears to HP-UX as a local printer. Thus, the spooler performs all the processing of options inside the printing script with the output directed to hpnpf for network communication.

Because HP has the largest share of the printer marketplace, some manufacturers such as Canon are implementing JetDirect code into their large scale printers (like the ImageRunner) so HPPI code can setup these printers to use the local lp options.

It would be nice if HP enhanced the BSD model script to call a selected model script before sending the data to RFC 1179 print servers. That way, the local options can be processed before sending and -o options will start working. Another useful enhancement would be to rewrite the spooler code to handle large print files (bigger than 2GB).