Re: Websites on a Matrix Printer

[Michael Parson <mparson%bl.org@localhost>]

Print in any unix has always been a pain if you're not using a
postscript printer.

You need something that can convert from PS to your native printer
language.

The nice thing about most dot-matrix printers is that a lot of them use
the Epson protocol in addition to the native one.

It's been a number of years since I did this myself, but the
print/magicfilter package used to serve me well.  You can set it up as
a print filter in /etc/printcap and then you can just print with the
regular lpr command from the command line or from most any app's default
print function.

Once you get magicfilter set up, you can call lpr on most any file
directly, the filter will figure out the file format and call whatever
helper programs it needs to convert it to postscript, then use
ghostscript to convert those results to the native printer format.

Even if you have a printer that can print PS natively, you can use
magicfilter to do things like:

lpr foo.jpg

and have it come out the printer.

--
Michael Parson
Unix Thug
Austin, TX
KF5LGQ

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012, herbert langhans wrote:
> Hi List,
> some question about traditional matrix printers.
>
> I am quite sure I can copy some text file to /dev/lpt and a matrix
> printer brings it to paper the same way it looks with $cat textfile.txt.
>
> If I use a web browser like firefox with some simple website, like for
> example such one:
> http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/hightech/1295172/print.do
> - the printer will make some graphical typeset what looks like the
> website (big/small fonts, graphics). Right?
>
> Is there some easy way to pass such a print job in a way to get a simple
> built-in-typeset output on a matrix printer? Is there even a printer
> driver required? There might be an easy solution ...
>
> Being a teacher I want to buy some cheap and relieable Oki printer
> since I produce lots of such paper. Laser toner is not very
> economically, inkjet is to forget anyway.
>
> Any ideas, hints?
> Thank you!
> herb langhans