Apple Laser printer support

[Jack Weldon]

In article <9003202126.aa14337 at SMOKE.BRL.MIL> LEONARDZ at VM.UOGUELPH.CA (Len Zaifman) writes:
>
>     I am trying to hook up an apple laser writer to my Personal IRIS. I have
>a cable made up and I can cp postscript_file /dev/ttyd2 and get the printout.
>However, I initially want to set up the printer as my default printer so I just
>need lp to print. The long range plan is to try to make the spool/print service
>work from a PC running FTP software's version of PCnfs. Does anyone have the
>proper filters for doing this ?? How can I set it up to install properly from
>the system visual administration tools ?? ( I love 'em, but its annoying when
>they are incomplete ).
>        The main thing I want from the script, apart from allowing me to use lp
>, is that it autodetects postscript and ascii files and prints both correctly.
>If replies are mailed to me directly, I will post the results once I have a
>working configuration.

You may run into a snag here. If you have your printer setup in PostScript
mode, all documents sent to it must also be PostScript.  Since your application
outputs PS, all you'll need to do is convert the ascii to PS, and print it.
There are a a few public domain packages that do that, or you can buy the
Trans/Laser pkg from SGI. What you'll get is the interface files that will
detect whether the file is ascii, IRIS image format, or PS, and "do the right
thing". The system manager uses the interface that comes with Trans, so you
can use it to setup the Laser.  Or, if you use you own ascii -> PS converter,
use the Dumb/Generic script from the System Manager, which just sends what
you give it to the port.

>How can I set it up to install properly from
>the system visual administration tools ?? ( I love 'em, but its annoying when
>they are incomplete ).

Sorry you think they are incomplete, but Adobe charges us for Trans, so we
can't include it in the system for free (same goes for Sun, et al.)

As for the interface between PCnfs and printing, there are a couple of things
you can do.  I haven't seen FTPs version, but Sun's uses BSD-style lpd to
spool print jobs, not SysV lpsched.  Maybe FTPs version does both, or you
get the source and can modify it. Or you can wait until "a future release"
(nice ambiguous term there, Jack) when you will be able to use lpd on your
IRIS.


Cheers, 

Jack P. Weldon (jweldon at sgi.com)     Fish and guests grow stale after 3 days
SGI Product Support		                           M.F.K. Fisher