<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Windows-only printers</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" HREF="t1.htm"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Networks" HREF="x1751.htm"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="How to print to a fax machine." HREF="x2029.htm"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="sect1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ></TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x1751.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x2029.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect1" ><H1 CLASS="sect1" ><A NAME="winprinters" ></A >Windows-only printers</H1 ><A NAME="AEN2007" ></A ><P >As I discussed earlier, some printers are inherently unsupported because they don't speak a normal printer language, instead using the computer's CPU to render a bitmap which is then piped to the printer at a fixed speed. In a few cases, these printers also speak something normal like PCL, but often they do not. In some (really low-end) cases, the printer doesn't even use a normal parallel connection but relies on the vendor's driver to emulate what should be hardware behavior (most importantly flow control).</P ><P >In any case, there are a few possible workarounds if you find yourself stuck with such a lemon.</P ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="gs-win-redirector" ></A >The Ghostscript Windows redirector</H2 ><P >There is now a Ghostscript printer driver available (called <B CLASS="command" >mswinpr2</B >) that will print using Windows GDI calls. There is also a port redirection tool called <B CLASS="command" >redmon</B > which will run a print job through Ghostscript before finally printing it. (Rather like an <TT CLASS="option" >if</TT > filter in Unix's LPD). Taken all together, this allows a Windows machine to print PostScript to a Windows-only printer through the vendor's driver.</P ><P >If you have a host-based printer that can't be used directly, you can export it as a "Postscript" printer by using redmon, Ghostscript, and mswinpr2 on a Windows PC and print through the vendor's drivers.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="hp-winprinters" ></A >HP Winprinters</H2 ><P >Some HP printers use "Printing Performance Architecture" (marketing speak for "we were too cheap to implement PCL"). This is supported in a roundabout way via the pbm2ppa translator written by Tim Norman. Basically, you use ghostscript to render PostScript into a bitmapped image in pbm format and then use pbm2ppa to translate this into a printer-specific ppa format bitmap ready to be dumped to the printer. This program may also come in ghostscript driver format by now.</P ><P >The ppa software can be had from <A HREF="http://www.rpi.edu/~normat/technical/ppa/" TARGET="_top" >the ppa home page</A >; pbm2ppa supports some models of the HP 720, 820, and 1000; read the documentation that comes with the package for more details on ppa printer support.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="lex-winprinters" ></A >Lexmark Winprinters</H2 ><P >Most of the cheap Lexmark inkjets use a proprietary language and are therefore Winprinters. However, Henryk Paluch has written a program which can print on a Lexmark 7000. Hopefully he'll be able to figure out color and expand support to other Lexmark inkjets. See <A HREF="http://bimbo.fjfi.cvut.cz/~paluch/l7kdriver/" TARGET="_top" >here</A > for more info.</P ><P >Similarly, there are now drivers for the 5700, 1000, 1100, 2070, 3200, and others. See the supported printers listing above, and my web site, for more information on obtaining these drivers.</P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x1751.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="t1.htm" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x2029.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Networks</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >How to print to a fax machine.</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >