[PLUG] Questions re lpr and imaging

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:54:49 -0700 (PDT)
Joe Pruett <joey at clean.q7.com> dijo:

> > If anyone knows how to kick lpr in the butt, I'd like to know. Any
> > other suggestions are also welcome.
> 
> i'd use ghostscript to convert to pcl and then print the pcl file.  that 
> will go much faster as you'll effectively have rip'ed it under linux and 
> then the printer just has to put the toner on the page.  the printer will 
> also be much faster if you can print it non-collated (250x page 1, 250x 
> page 2, etc) and then manually collate.  or if you have the external 
> collater, print 20 copies at once (or whatever the maximum capacity is for 
> the collater).

Indeed, I am currently investigating Ghostscript. I have used it
occasionally in the past to view .ps files when I needed to be sure the
file was correct. But I know it has a lot more capabilities, so this
morning's work is to try to figure out how to do what you suggest.

Presumably the following would convert the PDF to PS:

gs filename.pdf filename.ps

But it's not working. Instead of writing the .ps file it displays the
PDF on screen.

Also, I'd like to specify the output device, which in CUPS is known as
Laserjet_8000_Series2. I also set this as the default printer in CUPS,
but I can't get the syntax right to make Ghostscript use the device:

gs -h

Returns a long list of printer devices:

Input formats: PostScript PostScriptLevel1 PostScriptLevel2
PostScriptLevel3 PDF Default output device: x11alpha
Available devices:
   alc1900 alc2000 alc4000 alc4100 alc8500 alc8600 alc9100 ap3250
appledmp (full page of similar device names deleted for brevity).

Apparently it can only use the devices in the list, not devices the
user has installed in CUPS. I read through the list trying to figure
out which would be most compatible with my printer (which has PCL5 and
Clonescript 2), but the closest I can come is a device name listed as
"pcl3," although there is another named "laserjet."

The man page hasn't answered many questions, so now I'm off to google.