On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, Steve Quint wrote:

> I've been running NetBSD 1.3.2 on my Q700 for some time now, and have been
> using Monroe Williams' package to print to my Style Writer II with great
> results.  I've recently been given an Epson Stylus 500 and would like to
> replace the Style Writer with it.
> 
> My question is - What filter packages would you recommend?
> 
> I already have ghostscript and enscript installed.

I have an Epson Stylus Pro attached to my Quadra 630, and ghostscript
and enscript, as you do. My only filter is a simple bash script,
below.

I personally don't like the idea of the system deciding what to do
with my print job based on suffix, or whatever. That's too much like
DOS for my taste, and furthermore it's not necessary. "enscript," and
"tex", e.g., can be set to pipe their output to lpr, so I just do
that. As far as they know, it's a real postscript printer.

The "-l" option is for when I'm playing with ghostscript in
interactive mode; it also plays a part in a couple of shell functions
for printing jpegs. The commented line is the alternate hi performance
driver. It doesn't provide any improvement that I can see.

You would have to pick an appropriate universal driver from
/usr/pkg/share/ghostscript/5.10--probably stc500p.upp, but there are
a few others that would also work, at least stc500ph.upp, and
also stcany.upp.

I'm really pleased with this set-up. It starts printing a big job
almost immediately, as soon as it's rendered the first page, and the
630 doesn't bog down at all. The alternative, of explicitly
directing the ghostscript output to a temporary file, is much less
pleasant.

Here's my entry in /etc/printcap

# Epson Stylus Pro
lp|epstypro|stc|Epson Stylus Pro:\
        :lp=/dev/tty01:sd=/var/spool/lpd:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:\
        :br#57600:pc#500:xc#0177777:ms=-parity,ixon,-opost:sh:\
	:if=/usr/local/libexec/lpr/stc-if:

and here's the filter that the "if" entry point to

#!/usr/pkg/bin/bash
#
# "if" filter to invoke Ghostscript driver for Epson Stylus Pro,
#
# Use: lpr [-l] -s file...
#
#	<default>	print postscript level 1 and 2 and pdf files
#	-l		send ESC/P 2 rendered file to printer
#
case $1 in
	-c) cat /dev/stdin 
	;;
	*) /usr/pkg/bin/gs -q -sOutputFile=- "@stc.upp" /dev/stdin -c quit
#	*) /usr/pkg/bin/gs -q -sOutputFile=- "@stc_h.upp" /dev/stdin -c quit
	;;
esac

> ------------------------------------------------------------
> "Always ... always remember: Less is less. More is more. More is
> better. And twice as much is good too. Not enough is bad. And too
> much is never enough except when it's just about right."
> 			-- The Tick
> ------------------------------------------------------------

Spooooooooon!