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Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

 
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Brian C Freeman
Advisor

Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

Hello all,

It has been a while since I posted and I need some help again.

I have installed an HP4250 Network Printer using the HP Jetadmin downloaded from HP's website for my HP-UX 10.20 box. I used the 4250 model script that was downloaded by the jetadmin software when I added the network printer. I can print ascii all day long from every file that I have tried; however my engineers often need to print screen shots or hardcopy prints from their test program (HP SmarTest). Whenever I take a screen shot and save it (.tif, .bmp) and try to print from CDE, it gives an error that reads: "There is no print capability for this datatype". If I try to print the file from Command Line it will print wingdings on 35 pages.

Any thoughts on how I might get the graphics printing working here would be great.

Thank you,
Brian
6 REPLIES 6
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

> [...] HP4250 [...]

I'll guess that that's some (undisclosed)
variety of HP LaserJet 4250.

> [...] graphics printing [...]

The documentation which (Google and) I can
find suggests that this thing can cope with
PCL, PostScript, and perhaps PDF. Perhaps
you should send it something which it
understands. (I'd probably try PostScript.)

> [...] (.tif, .bmp) [...]

As a start, I'd try using a Web browser to
display this stuff, and then try to print
from that. My limited experience with Web
browsers on UNIX suggests that they can
typically produce PostScript. Most likely,
there are other graphics conversion programs
which can transform what you have into what
you want, but it helps to have some idea of
what you want.
Matti_Kurkela
Honored Contributor

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

Open the image with some graphics program that has a "print" feature, or install a command-line tool that can convert your image format of choice to PostScript or PCL.

The problem is that to print an image, the image must be converted to PostScript or PCL for the printer to understand it. The CDE has extremely limited facilities for identifying & converting image file formats to printing languages.

The standard HP-UX print spooler doesn't normally do data conversions either: it basically assumes that it is given something that the printer can handle, waits for the printer to become free, then sends the data in through the model script. Usually the model script only adds some initialization sequences to select the paper size or any other options chosen by the user, nothing else.

Basic PCL print jobs can be pretty unstructured, so there is no simple test that can verify that a given file is a valid PCL print job with any reasonable accuracy. Furthermore, the PCL commands are so short that a typical image file is likely to contain at least some bit strings that match some random PCL commands - hence your 35 pages of wingdings.

MK
MK
Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

Although in the Mac and PC world, graphics seems quite transparent, there is a lot of conversion that goes on behind the scenes. Xwindows is lost in the sands of time with only simple tools like xwd and xpr. The man page for xpr gives you an idea about the supported printer list (all obsolete almost 20 years ago).

You could use Google to search for xwd format converters (ImageMagick) but many of them don't run on HP-UX -- you have to transfer the file to a PC and do the conversion and printing there.

Or you can run a Xwindow emulator on a PC, then capture the window with Alt+PrtScr. Then paste into your favorite word processor.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin
Brian C Freeman
Advisor

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

Thank you all for your replies. I was already resolved to thinking we may just have to send the prints to a PC and print them. I think the PCL/PS conversions are more trouble than they are worth when we can just print from our numerous windows machines.
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

> [...] we can just print from our numerous
> windows machines.

I must have missed these in your original
request.

And how, exactly, do you print a ".tif, .bmp"
file on one of your Windows systems?
Brian C Freeman
Advisor

Re: Printing Graphics in HP-UX 10.20

You didnt miss anything, it was said in the last post from Bill Hassell that we could just transfer them to the PC and convert and print.
So I figured it to be the way to go. At first I wanted to print directly from the HP but it is unreasonable to think we should print to a 15 yr old printer or have to jump through hoops to do this; when we already have other facilities then why bother. More trouble than it is worth.

On a side Note:
I actually did this and it works perfectly fine printing a screenshot that was taken on the HP-UX box then ftp'd to our central ftp location and then printed from the share through my XP Pro machine and viola a .tif printout of exactly the screenshot.

I think this will work fine for our needs.

Thanks again!