UNIX-PX Printer Setup

[Kevin O'Gorman]

In article <1435 at mtunb.ATT.COM> jcm at mtunb.UUCP (was-John McMillan) writes:
>In article <719 at kosman.UUCP> kevin at kosman.UUCP (Root) writes:
>>...
>>Yep, AT&T did it to you again.  They did it to me, too.  Screen printing
>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^              ^^^^^^^^^^^^  AT&T targets precisely ;-)
>>works only with AT&T printers, maybe on full compatibles.  This is not too
>>surprising because it is built into the kernel and they didn't want to
>>clutter that with lots of odd options for different bit-addressing styles
>>that different printers have.
>
>(It's always fun reading paranoid broadcasts!-)  AT&T -- according to
>the report I heard from within AT&T -- TRIED to include the OKIDATA-92
>printer, but supporting this printer's "features" collided with deadlines.

Then, in another followup:

In article <202 at abacab.UUCP> hartman at abacab.UUCP (Mark A. Hartman) writes:
>In article <719 at kosman.UUCP>, kevin at kosman.UUCP (Kevin O'Gorman) writes:
>> 
>> Yep, AT&T did it to you again.  They did it to me, too.  Screen printing
>> works only with AT&T printers, maybe on full compatibles.  This is not too
>        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Sorry, but this is blatently untrue.  The screen print option works with
>a number of non-AT&T printers, notably several Epson and HP printers.
>I'm not sure whether the manual states explicitly which ones work,
>though.

It looks as if I posted before checking things out.  Apologies to AT&T.
For the first few years that I had the 7300, I only had the Okidata, and
had no contact with other UNIX PC's except one with a ATT471.  I got a
firm impression of how things were from that experience and the fact that
as near as I could tell, AT&T never said screen dumps depended on your
printer type.  That looked like a gotcha! to me.  Still, I usually refrain
from stating my impressions as fact, no matter how firm.

Anyway, the solution I described in my followup was working for me for
some time.  I thought I understood the printer stuff until this thread
started.  Now I have some questions.

Now, the followups are confusing me a bit.  If lots of printers are supported,
I expect the format conversions to be in a program somewhere, but I cannot
find it.

Continuing <1435 at mtunb.ATT.COM> jcm at mtunb.UUCP (was-John McMillan) writes:
>
>The KERNEL only sends the bits out (ref: 'wd' ioctl): there is a
>screendump program that is responible for translating it to the printer
>-- and therein's your problem -- at least the software one!

Are you sure?  There's no program by that name (or any other unknown progams
with names ending in 'dump') on my system.  Also, I can't figure out how
to look up a 'wd' ioctl.  I do see ioctl(wd,WIOCREAD,&pixmap) but that
doesn't tell me much.

>
>You can generate image FILES -- since I do NOT do this, I'll defer to
>others to explain how -- and drive the printer from your own
>bitmap-to-printer converter.

I can see how to do this if I'm writing the package, but the data flow
for the Shift-Print screen dump still looks like a kernel thing to me.

Does anyone have better information?