[wplug] printing to network printer

[Drew from Zhrodague]

> 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...

 	Fab. I have used expensive RIPs, and host-based windows-driver 
RIPs. I still prefer to either use my paint program to pre-process the 
image (usually for 1-bit imaging), or throw it at Ghostscript/CUPS, which 
does a fine job if your printer driver is setup properly. Free and 
instantly-working win again!


> 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)...

 	I'd be interested to see what happens with this thing when you 
communicate with it. Perhaps it listens for UDP data thrown at it?

 	I'd say to chuck the lexmark. One of us on the list can part with 
an old Epson inkjet, especially me.


-- 

Drew from Zhrodague		http://www.WiFiMaps.com
drew at zhrodague.net		http://www.zhrodague.net