[wplug] printing to network printer

[Paul Armor]

Hi,
I used to work at lexmark

*ducks to avoid missile objects and blows to the head*

and might be able to help/babble a little.

On Fri, 19 Jan 2007, Brandon Poyner wrote:

> Right, perhaps hastily worded on my part.  The z65n uses a proprietary
> datastream GDI instead of something like PCL, and it doesn't use
> common network protocols (which protocol it does use IBM doesn't seem
> to say).

I think there is a "driver"/transport blob of crap available for linux 
available for download at:
http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=229:1:0:341:0:0

I worked in their Business Products Division, on their embedded print 
servers (found in laser printers and high-end inkjets, not the crap 
for "dumb" inkjets (note, I think most VCR's are "smarter"/more-powerful 
than Lexmark inkjets)).

One of the things I worked on was a "host based RIP" product for Solaris 
(so that you could attach your $50 inkjet to your $10k Sparc box... go 
figure); what this did was take the software that ran on their laser 
printers that took a data stream like post-script or PCL/PJL and "RIP"'ed 
it, making a datastream that a dumb inkjet could turn into dots on the 
page.  They wrapped a bunch of hacks (to an already bad printing subsystem 
in Solaris) around that so that LPR could handle it.  I mock this as I had 
the "pleasure" of watching this printer "driver" use whatever resources 
were available on your $10k Sparc box (at the time, a 296MHz Ultra2, with 
2GB of memory), and bring that box to its knees for several seconds 
(5-30); to print a page of text...

I think I remember hearing of them (in the Consumer Products Division) 
working on a stripped down IP stack that they could put on a really cheap 
part that they could slap on a really cheap printer (like the z65) to sell 
as a "network attached printer".

I think that the blob of stuff I referenced above is a port of that 
Solaris stuff to linux and OSX.  If that's the case, this can be used with 
LPR/LPD and IPP, and just plops itself in the middle to preprocess the 
data on the host, and generate the inkjet data stream.

Why the IP can't be seen by anything else?  I can't speak to, other than 
to say that I know that Lexmark would at times liberally adapt standards 
to their wants, so who know's what that things doing (short of sniffing a 
windows box printing to it, or sniffing it when it's powered on to see 
what nasty bastardization of multi-cast they're implementing)...

Cheers,
Paul