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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: stopthegop on February 05, 2007, 11:29:52 AM

Title: Printing gripe
Post by: stopthegop on February 05, 2007, 11:29:52 AM
This is a minor gripe but I would like to find a generic laser printer driver for the Amiga which will allow me to print only even and odd numbered pages at a time.  I own Turboprint7, but I cannot find that particular option anywhere.  Does anyone else know how I can do double sided printing of simple text files without resorting to doing it one sheet at a time using the manual feed?  That gets really **cking old with a 70 page document..     :lol:    I guess the other option is Pagestream (which I also have), but that requires a lot of fiddling and formatting to set up a large file to print double sided..  These are simple but big text files that I want to print -- fast, double-sided and with not much fuss.   Anyone know a good way to go about this?  Thanks
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 05, 2007, 12:50:21 PM
Its certainly possible, I could modify my Laserjet driver to use the Duplex (Esc&l1S) option for all prints.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: stopthegop on February 05, 2007, 12:55:53 PM
That would be great if you wouldn't mind!?  I have a Brother 1240..  I think it is HP compatible..  Not 100% sure about that
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: InTheSand on February 05, 2007, 07:19:33 PM
Hi,

I also have a Brother HL-1240... It's HP-compatible to the extent that it uses the same PCL layout language, so you might be in luck.

However, I never had it directly connected to my Amiga (only ever printed to it across the network via a Linux box with CUPS running the lpr daemon, and the generic PostScript driver on the Amiga side).

 - Ali
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 05, 2007, 07:28:22 PM
Yes, your Brother HL-1240 is HP PCL 4 compatible but it is NOT a duplex printer, you can only duplex manually via the manual paper feed tray. You need a hardware addon to do automatic duplexing (w/o manual intervention).

My Brother HL -1270N does not do auto duplex either so I cannot test the driver. I will let you know when its ready, it will be uploaded to Aminet.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: stopthegop on February 07, 2007, 03:28:26 PM
Quote
Yes, your Brother HL-1240 is HP PCL 4 compatible but it is NOT a duplex printer



Thats why I want to be able to print just ODD numbered pages first, then to just reorient the pages in the auto feeder and print EVEN numbered pages.  Call it "auto" duplex printing on a budget.    :-)
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 07, 2007, 07:21:46 PM
IF you want to print just Odd pages and then Even pages, then a new driver will not help. That is down to the application to specify which pages to print, a driver prints text or graphics, it knows nothing of pages other than a form feed or to print on other side. You normally specify which pages to print in the Print dialog box, a driver cannot do that. Sorry.

Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: stopthegop on February 07, 2007, 07:45:09 PM
When I select "Print..." (with elipses) from a program's menu options and I get a popup with three choices such as "print" (no elipses), "settings...", and "cancel", what is it I'm changing when I select "settings..."?   Are any changes I make to these settings unique to the application I'm using or are they global, affecting the way all applications will print?  This is where I would expect to find the option to print either EVEN, ODD, or ALL.  My understanding is that these settings are options for the printer "driver", affecting the way all applications print (assuming the changes are saved and not "applied")?  Is this not right?  If this dialog where I change printing options is not part of the application and it isn't "the driver", what is it?  
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 07, 2007, 11:09:43 PM
These settings are unique to the application such as Even, Odd, page no to page no or All. Sometimes the setting will equate to a printer preference such as the color or orientation but usually its application specific.

Settings for a printer driver globally are set in the Printer or PrinterGfx preferences program such as color or b/w, portrait or landscape, dithering, density, the port, the text quality and so on. Those settings can be converted to the drivers own commands usually in ESC/P2, PCL or Postscript.
These printer settings can be stored in memory in the printer preferences defined in AmigaOS which can be applied to any kind of printer - inkjet, dot matrix, laser and so on.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Hyperspeed on February 08, 2007, 01:47:02 AM
Neither the original Workbench printer prefs program or Turboprint will allow you to print odd/even pages.

I just loaded Wordworth 6 and when you click 'print' it gives a small window to confirm a few things before you send it to the printer:

Range
· All
· Pages  [    ]  (1-45 for example)
Copies [    ]

Options
Print >
Odd and even pages
Odd pages only
Even pages only

Shade >
Black and White
Colour
Greyscale 1
Greyscale 2

[]Draft Printout
[]Collate Copies
[]Reverse Order
[]Background Printing

You can get Wordworth 6 on the Wordworth Office 6 CD-ROM including Digita Datastore, Organiser and Money Matters. You could try Wordworth 7 too.

:-)
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Cass on February 09, 2007, 11:06:46 PM
Quote

However, I never had it directly connected to my Amiga (only ever printed to it across the network via a Linux box with CUPS running the lpr daemon, and the generic PostScript driver on the Amiga side).


I`ve been searching for a solution (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=25661) like that, is there a guide on how to print via eth ?

WinUAE supports Laser printing with Ghostscript on the PC side and PS driver on the Amiga side... (never tried this, so I don`t know if it works).
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 10, 2007, 04:15:45 PM
I have uploaded a new Laserjet_D (PCL 5) printer driver onto Aminet. I just appear in listings in a day or so.

The driver is based on my older Laserjet III driver but it now supports 600 dpi on highest density settings and will print on both sides of paper (if the printer supports auto-duples), and will eject the paper correctly this time, even in Winuae. Tested on Multiview and Wordworth 5.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Cass on February 10, 2007, 04:43:04 PM
Quote

I have uploaded a new Laserjet_D (PCL 5) printer driver onto Aminet


Is it compatible with the HP-1018 Laser printer?

Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: lurkist on February 10, 2007, 06:18:17 PM
Quote

You can get Wordworth 6 on the Wordworth Office 6 CD-ROM including Digita Datastore, Organiser and Money Matters.


I have this CD which I would really like to use, but it requires a password.  (I got it in a pile of second-hand stuff).
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 10, 2007, 07:38:55 PM
No, the HP-1018 is a Host based printer and will not work with the Amiga Printer driver system.

Specs are here (see http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/18972-18972-3328059-14638-3328066-1814092.html)
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Castellen on February 10, 2007, 07:47:35 PM
And just to state the obvious, Final Writer (or at least FW97) has similar print options to Wordworth.

I use it often to print large double sided documents in my postscript laser printer.
To avoid too much paper shuffling, you can also print the first (odd) sides in reverse order, put the whole lot in the manual feed tray, then print the even sides in normal order.
That's for us poor people who can't afford a real duplex printer :-)
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Cass on February 10, 2007, 08:16:34 PM
/me sad :-(

Not even a translator/intermediate program can do the job (the way should work WinUAE & Ghostscript)?


Just tried to print from WinUAE using GS. IT WORKS!
I`ve managed to print text & graphics.

Using the real thing should stream somehow the PS driver data to the GS installed on the PC -where the printer has the appropriate drivers-.


From the WinUAE help file:
Quote

Printing with WinUAE

Currently, there are 2 ways to print with WinUAE:

For the same way as classic a Amiga, you can set a parallel printer in the WinUAE settings tab Game & I/O Ports. Make sure Postscript  detection and Post Script Printer Emulation are not checked. If you use Windows 2000/XP, set the autoflush timeout to 2. Now you can save your config and can start WinUAE and do the rest on the Amiga. If you use turboprint, do not use the turboprint spooler and chose parallel port or turbopar for the print device. If you print something you should see an entry in the Windows printer spooler.
If you have a printer that the Amiga does not support, you can choose the Postscript output. For this you need to install GhostScript for Windows. In WinUAE, select the printer and check on  Postscript  detection and Post Script Printer Emulation. Note: You can not change these settings on the fly (when you press F12 during emulation).
Boot your emulated Amiga. There is a large probability that turboprint does not work with these printer settings, and prints out an empty page instead.
Remove turbostart if you have it and chose the Workbench Postscript Printer. Please note that the OS3.5 and OS3.9 drivers crash when you use greyscale or black and white. Choose color instead. Set it on all printer prefs pages. You can chose the real output format with the windows printer preferences.
Note: Most of the time it is enough to use the Workbench printer with 300 dpi. Higher resolutions may not produce an visible advantage, but definitely cost time and space.
The printer must dither colors, so it is important here to chose 600 or 1200 dpi on the Windows side.
If you really want greyscale and Black&White from the Amiga side, use the driver from OS3.1 which works. The OS3.5 and OS3.9 driver seem to have a compiler Bug, and this function also does not work on real Amigas.

Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Hyperspeed on February 16, 2007, 11:59:56 PM
Hrrmmm, ethernet printing on Amiga - wonder if that's possible. Turboprint can redirect output to various devices...

I bought a Stylus 3000 last year that prints carpet-sized pages and that has a network card in it. Might save a bit of time using ethernet instead of the slooOOow parallel port!
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: pjhutch on February 17, 2007, 05:12:40 PM
It is possible to print to ethernet over TCP/IP by using the Networking Printer Client from Aminet - NetParLpr.lha.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: wurzel on February 17, 2007, 10:02:41 PM
Quote

stopthegop wrote:
T guess the other option is Pagestream (which I also have), but that requires a lot of fiddling and formatting to set up a large file to print double sided..  These are simple


You have the tool to do exactly what you want, right there! It's not difficult to set up to print odd then even pages. The option is in the print requester. You don't have to print duplex which admittedy, is fiddly.

Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Hyperspeed on February 18, 2007, 10:05:35 PM
Quote
by pjhutch:
It is possible to print to ethernet over TCP/IP by using the Networking Printer Client from Aminet - NetParLpr.lha.


Says it works with Turboprint... will give it a try tommorrow! Thanks!

:-)
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: stopthegop on February 19, 2007, 01:13:10 AM
Any verdict on this question of sending printer stuff to and from ethernet ports?  
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Hyperspeed on February 19, 2007, 03:21:23 AM
Quote
by stopthegop:
Any verdict on this question of sending printer stuff to and from ethernet ports?


I'll try the tool on Aminet tommorrow when I can get a forklift to move the Stylus 3000.

;-)

I can't remember whether it had a BNC or an RJ45 connector now. I do have a spare RJ45 lead and a 3COM card for the A1200's PCMCIA port so I might be able to try something. The limiting factor will probably be the CPU though.

I have some cool pics I wanna print but they're 9 megapixel and I want them on A2 paper so this should be interesting.
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: sir_inferno on February 19, 2007, 10:07:35 AM
Quote

stopthegop wrote:
When I select "Print..." (with elipses) from a program's menu options and I get a popup with three choices such as "print" (no elipses), "settings...", and "cancel", what is it I'm changing when I select "settings..."?   Are any changes I make to these settings unique to the application I'm using or are they global, affecting the way all applications will print?  This is where I would expect to find the option to print either EVEN, ODD, or ALL.  My understanding is that these settings are options for the printer "driver", affecting the way all applications print (assuming the changes are saved and not "applied")?  Is this not right?  If this dialog where I change printing options is not part of the application and it isn't "the driver", what is it?  


bit of a workaround, but if you've got a "Pages:" box expecting you to type in 1, 2-5, 7 or watever...copy and paste a load of even number from a text file into that dialog box...
Title: Re: Printing gripe
Post by: Cass on February 19, 2007, 05:02:08 PM
Quote

 Might save a bit of time using ethernet instead of the slooOOow parallel port!

It's more a question of drivers than speed... (I'm patient ;-) ).

Anyhow, I 've found a solution (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=22375&forum=2#360907), and it works GREAT! :-D