K12Linux: Sending Raw PCL code to a Linux Printer.

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Matt G. Ellis wrote:

> I have a printer that is not suported in Linux, that I would like to share
> among a few computers I have networked.  I read somewhere that I can use the
> windows print drivers for the printer to genreate the raw PCL code, and then
> somehow send it to samba, which just dumps it to the LPT port on the server
> (which the printer is hooked to)

> Does anyone know how to do this?  I'm kinda confused.  I know I have to edit
> my smb.conf and /etc/printcap files, but I don't know how.

> I am running Mandrake 6.0 On the server.

PCL printers are supported under Linux, as they all speak the same
protocol: PCL.  If you can't send a PCL job to this printer by doing 'cat
<file.pcl> > /dev/lp0', then it's not a PCL printer.  You may still be
able to share it out and use the Windows drivers to generate the proper
job format for it even if it's not PCL, but if it /is/ PCL then that
shouldn't be necessary.

If you're certain it's a PCL printer, but you can't get it to work with
your distribution, you might try using LPRng with the 'ifhp' filter
system.  LPRng <http://www.astart.com/LPRng/LPRng.html> is a drop-in
replacement printing system that's a lot more flexible than the lpd
shipped with most Linux distributions.

Regards,
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer