[LIP] Fwd: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Open Office Printer

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Open Office Printer
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:28:39 +0530 (IST)
From: "Rajen M. Parekh" <[email protected]>
To: "GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India" <linuxers-8OISVr27DW9evyIjhjC63J/[email protected]>


On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Rony Bill wrote:
> Dear Luggers,
>
> My printer queue name is 'LX300' and device is a local printer /dev/lp0.
> What command should I add in the command line for the open office
> printer setup? I tried lpr, lp -d LX300, lpr -d LX300 but nothing seems
> to work. The test page in the OO printer setup simply ejects the page

This reply is probably late, but I hope it will still be helpful. First
of all I am assuming that the printer in question here is a Epson LX 300
Dot Matrix printer. Before I begin I suggest that you go through our lug
mail archive, because a few months back I had replied to somebody
regarding using Dot Matrix printers under Linux.

Anyway, I'll explain what setup I have done for using Epson LX 300
printer with Linux.

The story in short is to move away from CUPS if you want to use Dot Matrix
printers with Linux. You should use LPD printer software like the
excellent LPRng. Red Hat till its release 8.0 used to include LPRng, but
later version deprecated the software. The reason for this would best be
known by their developers. I don't want to offend anybody or  start any
flame war but seriously Red Hat was probably never developed for
Desktops. Try something better. Try SuSE, or better, try Slackware ;-)

The long story starts now. Well here is what you need to do to get your
Dot Matrix printer working  under Linux. First of all when using Dot
Matrix printers, you should use LPD printer software like LPRng.
Printing software like CUPS use postscript printing by default (try
printing a simple text file with CUPS) where as LPRng prints text
files in text mode. For printing files other then text files with LPRng,
you need a filter program which tells LPRng to filter the file to be
printed and get the desired output. If you are interested you should
install a software called apsfilter. This requires you to install
ghostscript and gs-fonts. These are mostly available on most of the
distros. You can then easily set up your printer using the SETUP script
which comes with apsfilter. Setting up a printer to work with LPRng is
actually writing a correct /etc/printcap file and using the correct
driver file from ghostscript. My current /etc/printcap file looks like
this,

lp|eps9mid;r=240x204;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\

     :lp=/dev/lp0:\
     :if=/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
     :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
     :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\
     :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\
     :mx#0:\
     :sh:

The only important thing above is the using the "eps9mid" printer driver
and "r=240x204" resolution entry. This is included by aps-filter to
specify what resolution is used. The output is excellent and you couldn't
ask for anything better.

I am currently using Slackware 10.0 for my office computer and all my
Invoice printing (using Foxpro with DOSemu),
Spreadsheet/Quotations/Letters printing (using OpenOffice), is done on
Epson LX300 printer. When I was using Red Hat (the last I used was
release 8.0) I was never satisfied with the printing. After I moved to
SuSE and later on to Slackware, I am more then happy.

I am sorry for this long mail, but I hope it helps.

Regards,
Rajen.


--
Toilet Toup'ee, n.:
 	Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
creating endless annoyance to male users.
 		-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

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