On Sat 12 Mar 2016 at 08:44:48 (+0100), jdd wrote: > Le 11/03/2016 21:28, David Wright a écrit : > > >You must live in a different price bracket from me. > > nope. I had at least two HP5M for free ten years ago... they died > recently.
Well, let's assume that most people buy their equipment rather than being given it for free. The HP5M is solely a printer which is fine as far as it goes, but now I need to buy a scanner, and quite possibly a fax machine, as well. AFAICT I'd have to use it through a parallel (or serial?) interface. This laptop has neither. You can network it with 10Base-T for a price, but no USB connection. I can see a refurbished one on the web for $340 (if that's the right model) which is far more than a new AiO. > There are ps compatible printer for cheap for years now. So you say, but I never seem to be able to find them in the shops. And take a typical web site. Here are the categories to refine one's search. Are people interested in whether a printer supports PDF directly? No: • NARROW BY: clear all • 0 Type of Printer + - clear □ [ ] All-in-One (23) □ [ ] Single-Function (14) □ [ ] Wide/Large Format (8) • 0 Output Type + - clear □ [ ] Black & White (12) □ [ ] Color (33) • 0 Print Technology + - clear □ [ ] Inkjet (5) □ [ ] Laser (39) • 0 Duplex Printing + - clear □ [ ] Automatic (31) □ [ ] Manual (13) • 0 Wireless Ready + - clear □ [ ] Wired (10) □ [ ] Wireless (23) □ [ ] Wireless Optional (5) • 0 Printer Connectivity + - clear □ [ ] USB & Network Ready (19) □ [ ] USB & Wireless (3) □ [ ] USB, Wireless, Network Ready (21) • 0 B&W PPM + - clear [...] • 0 Brand + - clear [...] • 0 Printer Use + - clear □ [ ] Home & Photo (4) □ [ ] Small Business (25) • 0 Department + - clear □ [ ] Printers (54) □ [ ] Laser Printers (8) [...] • 0 Photo Capable + - clear □ [ ] Not Photo (23) □ [ ] Photo (21) • 0 Rating + - clear [...] • 0 Deals + - clear □ [ ] On Promotion (21) • 0 Environmental + - clear □ [ ] Eco certified (50) □ [ ] Eco conscious (5) □ [ ] Recycled (10) • 0 ShopRunner + - clear □ [ ] ShopRunner Eligible (50) • 0 Printer Condition + - clear □ [ ] New (41) □ [ ] Refurbished (4) • 0 Supertank + - clear □ [ ] Not Supertank (44) • 0 Mobile Capability + - clear □ [ ] No (26) □ [ ] Yes (17) • 0 Number of Users + - clear [...] • 0 Auto Restock + - clear □ [ ] Auto Restock Eligible (31) • 0 Price + - clear [...] So the specs of each printer have to be found and examined. Can you give me a few current examples of the species? > for pdf, I only have seen this on news papers, but the subject > computer being airprint compatible must have some inside device, and > it's not cheap. Ditto. Brian has tried to explain, but I don't completely follow his explanation. Not being at the cutting edge of mobile phone technology, I don't have any experience of trying to use it, even if I had an AirPrint-supporting printer. > I spoke of gutenprint because I have a Canon photo thermal printer > that prints jpeg from cards, This is what's common. Not PDFs. And many take a variety of stick/cards. Hardly surprising: that's what's inside the cameras. Thank goodness one's not limited to TWAIN. Ugh. > but not from computer (!), so need a > driver. It was not at this time available on linux, but gutenprint > mailing list user asked me to make some tests and could with this > give me a solution. > > the people there knows incredibly well the printers :-) I'm sure they do. (However, they don't support my printer but luckily, HP does.) But I don't understand the relationship between linux printing and gutenprint. Actually I don't know much at all about printing any more. I used to in the days of dot-matrix, having happily written character definitions and code to rasterise and print graphics. Cheers, David.