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

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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Printing CLI with BL without lpr - using cat and netpbm
  • Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 23:26:20 +0000 (UTC)

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




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