Postscript Printer Interface

[William R. Pringle]

In article <88937784D5.52.123460000 at kesrith.uucp> rjbeeth at kesrith.uucp (Rick Beetham) writes:
>A friend of mine is trying to get a postscript printer working with
>his SUN SparcStation. He has got the machine talking to the printer
>and if he puts the printer into Emulation mode (LASERJET, PROPRINTER
>etc) he has no problem getting output.
>
>However until today when I sat down with him for a bit he could not
>get any TEXT output while in postscript mode.  For a while he

	(stuff deleted)

>Can anybody offer us any script models or interface source that we
>can modify and compile in order to get this beast working. If memory
>serves me right the printer is a QMS if that helps.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Your printer is probably fine.  You aren't sending it postscript encoded
files, that's all.  You have to convert text files to postscript.

Sun has a package called transcript which provides postscript support for
troff and text files.  One of the programs is enscript, which converts a
text file into postscript.  These are all available to the normal user.

There is also a printer filter that the System Administrator can install
that looks at the first line of the file to see if it is a postscript file.
(All postscript files begins with %!PS-Adobe-, or at least %!)  If the file
is postscript, it sends it to the printer unchanged.  If not, then it runs
it through enscript.

If you don't need troff support, there are a number of PD text to
postscript filters floating around.  Use one to format text and/or install
it as a printer filter.
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>
>Also if anyone can point me towards any documentation regarding
>postscript printers in general (ie. commands, interfaces etc) I
>would be most grateful.
^^^^^^^^^
The Postscript "bibles" are three books from  Addison-Wesley and written by
Adobe Systems.  They are:

	Postscript Language Reference Manual		(the red book)
	Postscript Language Program Design		(the green book)
	Postscript Language Tutorial and Cookbook	(the blue book)
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>
>Postings to this newsgroup or direct email is both appreciated.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Rick Beetham
>
>--
>{...}isishq!kesrith!rjbeeth    | Nepean, Ontario
>rjbeeth at isishq.fidonet.org