[BL] Printing CLI with BL without lpr - using cat and netpbm

sindi keesan keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
Sun Apr 3 19:26:20 EDT 2005


I used
pnmscale 1.2 testfile1.pbm > testfile65.pbm
to make the 900K file into something 6/5 as big that turned out to be
10 MB (!).  I could view it with zgv but when I tried to print with
pbmtoescp2 testfile65.pbm > /dev/lp0
'bad magic number - not a pbm file'

So pnmscale of netpbm appears to produce some format of pbm which netpbm's 
pbmtoescp2 does not recognize.  pnmscale is not suitable for small hard 
drives.

Three down (dot-matrix Panasonic not usable, Deskjet 540 usable but 
fuzzy, Epson Stylus usable but small), one to go (laserjet).

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> Epson Stylus C62, prints at 360 dpi and 180, 90, 60, probably also 720, 1440 
> (at least in Windows it does).
>
> Uses 'stcolor' in gs (as does probably the Stylus Color 800).
>
> pbmtoescp2 filename.pbm > /dev/lp0
>
> produced a nice looking printout (after I hit the middle button which was 
> flashing and needs to be hit to feed paper each time, and then after printing 
> hit the paper button to feed the paper the rest of the way out)
> which looks 5/6 (300/360) as wide as the copy I got from using gs with this 
> and the HP printer.  So it printed 1:1 pixel (the file was probably scanned 
> at 300x300 dpi).
>
> The output from this printer in gs, even though gs had to convert 300 to 360, 
> looks much clearer than the output on the HP Deskjet 540 but part of this may 
> be because we used a refilled cartridge with some streakiness.
>
> I recommend the Epson Stylus Color inkjets for use with netpbm in BL3 if you 
> don't mind the smaller output.  I have not tried scaling it up by a factor of 
> 6/5 with pnmscale.  I would prefer the 1:1 rather than the correct scaled-up 
> size because of increased legibility.
>
> So far the HP Deskjet produced output 4X too wide and the Epson's output was 
> 5/6 proper width.  Maybe the laserjet will do it right.
>
> I am starting to see why lazy people just get a bigger hard drive and use 
> ghostscript to print.
>
>
> keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux at lists.ibiblio.org
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>

keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org



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