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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 08:41:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.nodak.edu>
Message-Id: <199608201341.IAA07772@plains.nodak.edu>
To: andersoj@enc.edu, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Printer accounting woes
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>  The crux of the question at this point is, "How can we get the printer to 
>  report the number of pages it prints on each job?"  The FBSD handbook 
>  suggests that it can be done (see below) but I've been unable to locate 
>  any information at HP or on the web about this issue.
>  
>  A further question is whether or not any more sophisticated printer use 
>  management programs exist out there for FreeBSD.

postscript printers should give you the page count when you send the
following command down the serial interface:

        statusdict begin pagecount end ==

if you ask this question before and after a print job you can easily calculate
the pages printed. Be sure your serial line and application is set for
readng/writing.

If you do not have serial line to every printer, you still can get a pretty
good *text* page count by counting carriage returns and form feeds in the
output filter. This is pretty useless for postscript files, but then a person
could work a filter program using gs to count the pauses between gs processing
the postscript pages.

--mark.