Summary: If you have postscript 2 printers, use the native format (PCL for HP) and the Foomatic/hpijs driver.
I have 3 old HP4M laserjet postscript printers, and two of them are our main working printers. The HP4M is postscript level 2; level 3 came out in 1997. Over time, support for level 2 has been going away - Acrobat Reader 7 and Firefox 3 don't support it, for example. Since the 4M is robust and the chipless cartridges are cheap and easy to refill, I've had a twist in my knickers about the lack of support. Then I had a head-slapper moment. The HP4 *without* postscript (PCL) is also supported, and the Foomatic/hpijs driver translates from whatever to HP PCL just dandy. The printer is on 10mbps ethernet, the computers are fast (much faster than the engine in the HP4), and I don't often print directly to the printer from remote sites (I can route those jobs through my server). So - from now on, I will use PCL and the driver. I will still use the HP4M postscript level 2 for some of my old postcript files (I do business cards, envelopes, and letterhead in hand-written postscript), but from now on I will use the foomatic driver. Sad, really - I'm fond of Postscript 2. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
