From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Oct 7 22:25: 8 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.monochrome.org (monochrome.org [206.64.112.124]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E969237B66C for ; Sat, 7 Oct 2000 22:25:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (faro [192.168.1.7]) by mail.monochrome.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA93088; Sun, 8 Oct 2000 01:24:29 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from chris@monochrome.org) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 01:24:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Chris Hill X-Sender: chris@localhost To: Matthew Rochlin Cc: FreeBSD Questions List Subject: Re: HP Laserjet with JetDirect Network card -- how-to In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20001007140207.0189db68@pop3.norton.antivirus> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 7 Oct 2000, Matthew Rochlin wrote: > Thanks for your suggestion... > > It works (mostly), but only on postscript files. (I don't have ghostscript > or any other postscript generating tool on my BSD machine at the moment, If you have a Postscript printer, you don't need ghostscript, except maybe for viewing PS on-screen. gs allows a non-PS printer to print PS files. PS printers used to be very expensive due to Adobe's high licensing fees. > lpr test.prn > > Printed out the document (your email, actually) fine. But if I try to > print plain text, I get just the first line, somewhat garbled at the end > (the next two lines print out shifted to the far right and the rest of the > document doesn't print at all). The infamous stairstep effect! This happens because a unix newline is a single LF character, where the printer is probably expecting a CR and an LF like what DOS produces. I'll bet if you try to print a plain text file with one word per line, it will look like this. Having said that, I don't remember how to fix it but if you search the archives under "staircase" or "stairstep" you should turn up something. It was a simple fix, I just don't recall what it was. > Is there maybe something I need to do to distinguish plain text from > postscript? Not on my printer; it seems to recognize the Postscript header and deal with it automagically. PS or plain text, I just do a 'lpr filename' and it works. > Thanks! > (PS -- I also had to enable the printer spool daemon in > /etc/rc.conf ... lpd_enable="YES" ... per the Almost Complete > FreeBSD. Not enabled by default on my system. Maybe an installation > option I missed?) Woops, I forgot about that - sorry! It's been a while. I think the reason it's not on by default is that a) most things aren't in FreeBSD and b) lots of systems, e.g. servers, don't have or need a printer. PS - you should copy replies to the list (which I have done here). Most of these folks know a lot more than I do. -- Chris Hill chris@monochrome.org [1] Bus error netscape To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message