Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi
My HP printer is a true Postscript-compatible printer, and its not even listed on that table. Either the table is outdated, or it doesn't include every product line. 
I don't know what "Emulation" is, but per this Printer Data Sheet, depending on the model it's either included, an optional add-on product, or perhaps unavailable. The 2100 is a series of printers, with different capabilities. |
True Postscript is licensed from Adobe. Postscript "emulation" is a postscript interpreter usually coded by the printer manufacturer. BR-Script is Brother's emulation. HP, OkiData, Lexmark and others have their own unlicensed emulations.
So your HP 2100M should work without a print filter. One caveat, Level II postscript does not support printing *pdf files directly. Level III will.
You can work around that several ways.
textproc/xpdf and
graphics/evince will generate postscript output (*.ps) and there is a
print/ghostscript utility, pdf2ps, that will convert *.pdf -> *.ps
The 2100M spec sheet also says it will accept
Printer Command Language. I use PCL5e for my HP 5L and can print *pdf's directly. Warren Block, a FreeBSD forum moderator, has a helpful website on
LPR printing that describes generating a filter and the printcap entry. The example in Warren's site uses the classic PCL5e filter: ljet4 (600x600dpi). For your printer, I would use the plxmono driver as it supports 1200x1200dpi.
For a little more work you can use foomatic-rip and the hpijs driver as described in the OpenPrinting Data entry for the
HP 2100M and this
foomatic-rip LPR howto
In your ps2pcl filter entry you can set the default paper size, resolution and paper orientation. I wrote a
howto on pulling ghostscript commands from ghostscript based ppd's. You can have multiple printcap entries for the same printer. For example, I have a generic 600dpi/letter, a draft 300dpi/letter and landscape, #10 envelope 600dpi entries.