"Espon emultion" to PCL filter

[marc]

Hi,

I've a HP LaserJet Printer, accepting PS and PCL.

On the other side, i've got an old application which can only print
using "epson emulation". I use LPR/LPD for printing, but i have to
make those two things work together.

Does someone know where i could find a software filter that converts
epson emulation files to PCL ones ? I thing having it behind "if=" in
my printcap file would solve my problem.

Thanks a lot !

 

[Warren Block]

I've a HP LaserJet Printer, accepting PS and PCL.

On the other side, i've got an old application which can only print
using "epson emulation". I use LPR/LPD for printing, but i have to
make those two things work together.

Does someone know where i could find a software filter that converts
epson emulation files to PCL ones ? I thing having it behind "if=" in
my printcap file would solve my problem.

If the output is just text without any graphics, you could just filter
out the escape sequences.

If the output is just graphics, escp2topbm may allow you to convert it
to a pbm, then to ppm, then to PCL.

If you need a complete Epson emulation, there have been SIMMs for
various HP printers to allow that. Used to be expensive, may be cheap
but hard to find now.

The best option would be to convert the original application to print to
PostScript.

 

[Alan]

I've a HP LaserJet Printer, accepting PS and PCL.

On the other side, i've got an old application which can only print
using "epson emulation". I use LPR/LPD for printing, but i have to
make those two things work together.

Does someone know where i could find a software filter that converts
epson emulation files to PCL ones ? I thing having it behind "if=" in
my printcap file would solve my problem.

There are a few Epson to PostScript converters.
One is at
<http://www.faqs.org/ftp/pub/usenet/comp.sources.misc/archive-name/volume20/epsonps/>

A newer app is PPR, "a printer spooler specially designed for spooling
jobs to PostScript printers" at <http://ppr.trincoll.edu/> which has a
"a dot matrix printer language filter", which understands Epson LX-80
and Epson FX-850 code.


If you really do want PCL, Ghostscript can do that from the PS.