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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

With about 340K of files (mostly libraries) I am able to copy 
black-and-white drawings to a laserjet printer by typing copylj N (or 
copyep N), where N is the number of copies.

I have an HP Scanjet 5p (1989) with default mode Lineart and resolution 
300.

copylj: (my laser printer has insufficient memory for 300 dpi)
scanimage --resolution 150 | pbmtolj -res 150 -copies $1 > /dev/lp0


HP Deskjets will print 300 dpi (500 or 600 series) - have not actually 
tried scanning to them yet but this should work:

copydj:
scanimage |pbmtolj -res 300 -copies $1 > /dev/lp0


The maintainer of netpbm wrote that he just changed the man page for 
pbmtolj to discuss resolution issues, and that the 75 dpi default is for 
very old printers from 1988.  My printer is 1989 and does 300 dpi text but 
not 300 dpi pbm files because they overflow the memory.

I have not tried scanning at the 360 dpi that the HP scanjet is supposed 
to be capable of but this might work for Epson Stylus (ESCP/2) printers:

copyeps: 
scanimage --resolution 360 | pbmtoescp2 -copies $1

copylj is much faster than converting the pbm file to ps and printing with 
gs (about 60 sec extra per file).

I think all I needed for this was:

1.  scanner and scsi card (aic7xxx-type in my case) and cable 
insmod scsi_mod insmod sg insmod aic7xxx with scanner plugged in turned on
scanimage -L should list that scanner (so should the card module).
scanimage -h -d hp  lists features specific to the hp, such as default res 
300 and mode lineart

2.  For BL2 with glibc from SW81 I installed the SW81 sane package (SANE 
1.08) and then deleted most of it but kept:  scanimage, libsane and 
symlinks, libsane-hp.so - 180K.  This package should work for BL3 with the 
glibc from SW81.  There is also an hp.conf in /etc/sane.d and dll.conf.

The HP scanjets are supported by sane 0.67 with a few minor bug fixes and 
improvements in version 7, and I was able to compile 0.67 very easily so a 
version could be compiled for BL3.  I don't have the compiler installed, 
but if at least 3 people with HP or UMAX scanners and BL3 want, I will 
attempt to compile sane 0.67 for BL3.

3.  David Moberg compiled netpbm for BL3 so you need libc and libm and 
ld-linux from BL3 which I copied to BL2.  Place libnetpbm (160K) into
/usr/lib and pbmtolj (10K) or pbmtoescp2 into /usr/bin.

Total about 340K of files.  If pbmtolj could be compiled statically could 
one skip libnetpbm?

A major time savings for printing pbm files.  Otherwise it takes about 60 
sec to convert from pbm to ps, then start printing with gs (time to load 
gs, which I think has built-in fonts irrelevant to pbm) even at 200MHz.

I just made 3 copies of a Medical Power of Attorney this way using a 
printer extension cable to print to the other room rather than a network.

Netpbm also has useful programs for flipping, inverting, cropping, 
merging, etc.  Scanimage can modify the scanned files too.

The man pages for pbmtolj and pbmtoescp (this is what the maintainer 
called it) are online.  I could not find a man page for pbmtoescp2 so 
asked if he could add one or rename the old one.

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