lp output to scanner.....read on!

[Daniel Skates]

Hi Guys...long time user, first time poster...at least in my current guise!

I have rather a curly request from our support team, whicg goes something like this...
We now use the scanner in the credit dept to 1. Send files to our customers more quickly and efficiently.
2. To monitor paperwork flow internally and externally
3. To work towards paperless offices.
Can you please advise how we can send electronic files to our scanner ie can we send invoices from Alchemy or MFG to a file or memory in the scanner to scan, rather than having to print off the invoice or docs and scan these manually. We are still having to print off hundreds of docs per day even to scan so are saving space with having to save actual faxes ect but still having to print and then bin the paperwork.

Is this sort of thing even possible?
(Note MFG and Alchemy are legacy apps)

[Darren Prior]

Hi Daniel,

You haven't mentioned whether the scanner is attached to the HP-UX box or to some other device. Regardless of this, scanners convert images to data - they don't have a "HP-UX lp in" connector (least not on the ones I've seen!)

What you need to consider is the invoice format that your applications produce and the format that the scanning application uses. Is it PostScript, PDF,...? If it's one of these then you could transfer the file and perhaps convert it if required.

regards,

Darren.

[Daniel Skates]

That's pretty much the conclusion that I came to as well, transfer and convert. The user has convenienetly gone on leave, so detail is a bit scarce at this present moment. One thing you may be able to help me with is a solution for creating a Pipe to print to a file...the solution i found suggested the following:

Create a pipe: mknod /dev/mylppipe p

the create a printer using this pipe as the device.

I assume it's something like:
lpadmin -Pprintername -v/dev/mylppipe -mdumb

However the message I get back is:
lpadmin -pPRINTER -v/dev/mylppipe -mdumb
lpadmin: can't access file "/dev/mylppipe"

Then create a daemon to pick up stuff from the pipe.

Please advise if I am missing the point...

[Brad Sheldon]

Hi Daniel does the file exist ? If not then
have you run insf -e Give that a go...

I did not know MFGPRO was legacy Is it being replaced ?
how's the job anyways ????

"/dev/mylppipe"
Brad

[Rita C Workman]

Actually you can do this...but this is not easy and it is a royal pain according to our programmers.

We've looked to outside vendors, but they couldn't produce anything faster or particularly better than our in-house staff could - so mgmt opted to save money and keep doing it ourselves.
Folks here start with the print file and run it through conversions using Ghostscript (and yes you can get this free !! - mgmt likes that). The print file (page at a time) is finally converted to tiff documents that are then stored into our Electronics Records Management System (i.e. FileNet). It takes time and our developers aren't happy with doing it.....so maybe some vendor will figure a better way.

FYI - If I remember the vendor was RSA Software. But they couldn't better the rate of conversion from what we already had....and basically they were using the same tools our folks used - Ghostscript. However, you may want to talk to them rather than starting from scratch. Email me rworkman@wvwcc.org, I've got their number if you want it.

HTH
Rita

[Bill Hassell]

You'll need to dig into the scanner manuals extensively. HP-UX doesn't know anything about scanners, in fact, lp just prints plain ASCII files (well there is a postcript model that produces and ASCII-to-ps conversion), but that is of no value until you know how the scanner works.

Most scanners are output-only devices, that is, they connect to a computer which tells the scanner to do something and the result is sent to the computer. What you are looking for is a way to convert data from an application or from the lp command directly into a common image format such as TIFF, JPEG or PDF. Actually, HP produced this type of product a few years ago and it was called something like JetMail or JetPrint, Jet-something... It was way ahead of it's time. You feed in documents, specify an email address and the box would convert the paper to a PDF file. HP has rediscovered this concept and incorporated it into the LaserJet 9000mfp (no relation to the HP 9000 HP-UX computers). It will scan and send the result as a fax, a file to a computer or convert to PDF and email it. It is a bit pricey...

Now it's important to distinguish between scanning a piece of paper and turning the result into usable text (which is called OCR or optical character recognition). Scanning a picture and a document are identical--you end up with 1's and 0's indicating white and black spots on the paper. There is no concept of a character or text in that image so editing it or copying parts of the image is not possible. By running a text image through an OCR package like OmniPage or ReadRight, the document can be returned to a text document.

However, since the source of your documents is already in electronic form (the application is sending plain text or perhaps PCL or Postscript) then a printer script could be created that routes the lp data into a PDF converter. You'll need to find a PDF creator program. It looks Adobe doesn't provide one for HP-UX. Of course, all of this presupposes that your invoice archiving requires a PDF file. If you just want the electronic output from lp, you can easily create a printer script to send the output to a file. Now if the file is formatted for a specific printer (ie, PCL, Epson, Oki, Postscript, etc), then you'll have to do some conversion. It all depends on what you want in your archives.

[Daniel Skates]

Too hard basket.
Workaround found and implemented.

Thanks for the help.

Points assigned accrdingly.

[Daniel Skates]

Closed.