Print to a file

[Frank Solberg]

Hi,
Is it a easy way to configure a printer on hpux which prints to a file (pdf format) ?

[Stefan Farrelly]

no, its not easy, and in fact I think its impossible (to a pdf format anyway).

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi frank


The best way is to have an ascii dump and then ftp to a PC and then change the format to whatever you desire , as Unix primarily is good in processing rather tahn formatting.

Manoj Srivastava

[V. V. Ravi Kumar_1]

hi,
i think it is impossible.

[Sean OB_1]

I don't think there is anyway to save it as PDF. Possibly as a postscript file, and definetely as an ascii file.

[Steve Steel]

Hi

The ascii to PDF conversion was discussed recently.

see

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x0b1f4b3ef09fd611abdb0090277a778c,00.html


First try the solutions shown and if 1 works for you then put it in the dummy printer scripts.


Steve Steel

[Rich Wright · Accepted solution]

No, it is not easy. But it will be an adventure.
The pdf part makes it a little more difficult.

You will need to get a ps to pdf conversion utility.
See http://www.ps2pdf.com or search in http://hpux.cs.utah.edu

Then create a print queue using an existing laserjet printer if you can.

Copy /usr/spool/lp/model/postscript to /etc/lp/interface/model.orig/
Edit the /etc/lp/interface/ script changing the line that says "$REALMODEL ..." replacing "| $HPNPF ..." with a ps2pdf filter directing output to a file.

It will be a lot easier if you can get a pdf conversion utility that takes ascii input.
Then you can create a "dumb" printer.
lpadmin -p -mdumb -v/dev/null
which will only produce the /etc/lp/interface/ script file.
Then you can modify it to do what you want.

Here is a summary of the variables that the spooler passes to the /etc/lp/interface/ script.
$1 = Job
$2 = User Name
$3 = Title
$4 = Numb. Copies
$5 = Options
$6 and up = files to print

Good Luck,
Rich

[Gregory Fruth]

Ghostscript comes with a ps2pdf utility; perhaps you
can start with that.

http://www.aladdin.com/
http://www.ghostscript.com/
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

If you're starting with ASCII text, you'll want GNU
enscript or somesuch to convert your text from ASCII
to Postscript.

The trick is in writing the appropriate printer interface
script. You can probably arrange for the user to
supply the filename via a "-o" option. Then you'll
have to deal with file ownership and permissions.

HTH

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

I do it through the acrobat reader. In this case, no need for any special configuration for the printer.

Hope i understood your question ;-)

-raj