Print drivers

[Dave Aalbertsberg]

I have an HP C3000 running HPUX 11 and am trying to print to a ricoh copier/printer which has two language options RPCS and PCL 5c. The software I am using (VisView 5) only prints using HPGL 2 or Postcript, is there a way around this or do I have to buy an additional language card for the printer?

DaveAA2

[Mel Burslan]

Dave,

Try using a model script (I'm not exactly sure which one but one must conform to at least PCL5) other than the script you are trying to use. Even if the model scripts are not the same, you should be successful. I have done this for an HP printer which was not supported under unix and it worked fine.

if you did not know it already, you can find variety of printer model scripts at:

http://www.hp.com/pond/modelscripts/index2.html

Hope this helps.

[Mic V.]

Dave, I believe that as things stand, you're stuck. I know PCL, HPGL, and PostScript -- not familiar with RPCS. The three I know are mutually exclusive.

Having said that, it may be possible to work around the problem if you have some time. I'm not sure what your requirements are -- automated/interactive, novice/expert users, etc -- but basically I think you'll have to do some translation. Someone may have written a PS to PCL translator. You could take the VisView PS output, translate to PCL, and send to the printer from there.

Or, if your Ricoh supports PostScript cards, that would be easier. If it's old, you might run into lack of memory issues.

HTH.

[Bill Hassell]

HP-UX does not have a printer subsystem like Windows so other than a simple ASCII-to-Postscript converter, your application program must match your printer(s). PCL is the most popular printer language in the world and is simply ASCII plus escape sequences for special printer features. Postscript comes next but it is a page layout language and requires a special interpreter/formatter even for a simple ASCII file. HPGL is a plotter language, primarily found only on HP plotters and some LaserJets.

If your application program has some method to output the print job to stdout, you could find a Postscript to translate the data to fit the printer. But most application programs have very restricted controls on printing so your simplest solution is to get a Postcript adapter for the printer.