| | <<<Back 1 day (to 2018/04/04) | 20180405 |
| charle | Hi! Which sdevice should I use to convert pdf to pcl5? I use pxcolor but it's for PCL-XL printer compatible. Thanks! | 12:32.47 |
| kens | PXL color creates a PXL output file, not PCL5 | 12:33.07 |
| charle | yes and which driver for PCL5? | 12:33.27 |
| kens | PCL5 is unfortunately somewhat device-dependent (ie different devices render teh same PCL 5 content) slightly differently | 12:33.35 |
| charle | same thing for PCL6? | 12:33.50 |
| kens | PCL6 *is* PCL | 12:33.57 |
| | Bah PXL | 12:34.03 |
| | PCL6 is PXL | 12:34.21 |
| charle | ok PCLCOLOR is not PCL6E? | 12:34.44 |
| | PXLCOLOR is means | 12:34.56 |
| kens | The pxlcolor device produces PXL (aka PCL6) output | 12:35.00 |
| | So back to 'what printer' ? | 12:35.58 |
| charle | ok! hard to find information on site.... Am I searching at the good place or I should get the information on the website? | 12:36.02 |
| kens | Well I don't know the asnwer to that, since I don't know which site you are referring to | 12:36.21 |
| charle | https://www.ghostscript.com/ | 12:36.54 |
| kens | Oh chrisl its eems HP have 'rechristened' the languages :-( | 12:36.59 |
| | charle that's our website, its not a HP PCL website. | 12:37.12 |
| charle | yes I know... Why you talking about HP? | 12:37.53 |
| kens | SO now HP PCL6 'Standard' is the language formerly known as PCL5, while PCL6 'Enhanced' is the language formerly known as PCL-XL. No chance of confusion there.... | 12:38.01 |
| | charle PCL is a page description labguage developed by Hewlett Packard | 12:38.23 |
| charle | ah my bad! I'm newbie! | 12:38.45 |
| kens | So... again, which pritner are you talking about ? | 12:39.04 |
| charle | Hewlett-PackardHP LaserJet P3005 | 12:39.54 |
| kens | Well you can print PostScript to that | 12:40.58 |
| | So I'd use the ps2write device personally | 12:41.27 |
| | If you really insist on using PCL then you could try the pxlcolor device, the specs aren't clear about exactly which kind of PCL6 it supports. | 12:42.07 |
| | Failing that, then you'll just have to try some evices and see. | 12:42.35 |
| charle | do you find this information on the hp website. Is there list of hp printer with the compatibility? | 12:42.40 |
| kens | I found the tech specs for the printer. | 12:42.52 |
| charle | k | 12:43.04 |
| kens | Which say its upports PCL6, PCL5e and PostScript level 3 | 12:43.06 |
| chrisl | kens: We should probably point Henry at that, and ask him to review it, and communicate it to Lisa - our website should reflect HPs terminology - what a ballache :-( | 12:43.51 |
| kens | Its a complete nightmare :-( | 12:44.04 |
| charle | do I have to install postscript driver on the server or ghostscript create the file and the server driver isn't used? | 12:44.41 |
| kens | Mind you Wikipedia articles are not netirely reliable. I'll see if there's anythign official from HP | 12:44.47 |
| | charle if you use the ps2write device then the output will be a PostScript pprogram. You can send the file containing the program directly to any printer which supports PostScript. If its a HP printer you might have to stick some PJL boilerplate round it to select the language. | 12:45.50 |
| charle | do you know if most of the new hp printer support PXL-XL? | 12:46.45 |
| | PCL-XL | 12:46.55 |
| kens | Thay all should. One of the reasons for HP developing PXL was to avoid the kind of device-dependent mess they got into with PCL5. It seems there was some customer push back, so they wholesale imported the old language into the new (a very bad idea) and they've now compounded that bad decision by changing the names. | 12:47.53 |
| | SO now I don't know if PCL6 means PXL-XL or the old PCL5 with a new name | 12:48.30 |
| enyc | charle: hrrm , the P3005D I rememebr much fun wiht | 12:48.50 |
| charle | ok! Big mess up! | 12:49.05 |
| enyc | charle: I remember dealing with it in the windows-xp//linux-desktops era at old-w0rk | 12:49.09 |
| | charle: from what I recall, the HP provided driver for winxp annoyed certain users by always having 8 second latency/delay regardless (it would print fast once going, just always delayed-starting...) ! | 12:49.42 |
| | charle: I do recall, it behaved 'best' with the Adobe-Generic Postscript-Driver, instead =) | 12:50.08 |
| | charle: similarly, linux printed to it fine in postscript | 12:50.14 |
| charle | thanks for info! | 12:50.27 |
| enyc | charle: but things may have changed these days | 12:50.34 |
| charle | maybe I should get another printer brand! :) | 12:50.50 |
| enyc | charle: i would note, not just brand... each printer different | 12:51.00 |
| | charle: the little HP 1320 D's for example, were totalyl different matter | 12:51.13 |
| | charle: they behaved better with PCL printing than using postscript | 12:51.25 |
| | charle: then there was the enormous epson that couldn't spell | 12:51.35 |
| charle | I think all printer should integrate PDF Native. Lot of advantage! | 12:51.45 |
| enyc | charle: i don't know how it was managing to print out "Farry" rather than "Ferry" when printed using native driver, but it did.... | 12:52.01 |
| kens | Lots of disadvantages too | 12:52.04 |
| charle | ? | 12:52.16 |
| enyc | charle: generalyl, i would get printers that support a few difefernt input formats e.g. PCL Postscript PDF or soemtihng and DON'T _require_ a "special" driver | 12:52.42 |
| kens | PDF isn't streamable, so you need to store the hwole file before you start printing. That can be a problem when the input file is a couple of Gigabytes | 12:52.45 |
| charle | yes you are right but you are sure to get it right on paper at the end | 12:53.41 |
| kens | Well no not really | 12:53.50 |
| enyc | charle: then... ify you are having niggles, theres almost invariatbble a workaround by using different driver/option | 12:53.58 |
| chrisl | There are *way* more broken PDF producers out there than Postscript/PCL/PXL | 12:54.05 |
| kens | Because there are gray areas (even with PDF 2.0 in the specification. | 12:54.05 |
| charle | but we are in 2018 why all manufacturer don't do it the same way? | 12:55.40 |
| enyc | charle: notice in typical modern linux distro printer-installation ... you can select difert driver options for same printer when setting it up. | 12:56.05 |
| | you may be offered (hpijs) (pxlmono) (ps) (hplip) blah blah blah =). | 12:56.28 |
| kens | charle, because manufacturers use interpreers from different sources. If there's ambiguity in the specification, then they behave differently. And, as Chris said, many PDF files are invliad, but *Acrobat* will open them anyway | 12:57.16 |
| | That's not a great problem if its on a display, because if tis wrong, then no harm done. | 12:57.32 |
| charle | Is there a tool to validate pdf? | 12:57.57 |
| kens | But if you printed 200 pages of 'not quite right' outptu because the file was broken and the processor just carried on regardless, you might justifiably be cross | 12:58.00 |
| | charle No | 12:58.07 |
| | There are tools to validate various flavours of PDF file (eg PDF/A0 abnd some limited validation tools | 12:58.32 |
| | I've not come across any tool which reliably and thoroughly validates PDF files and finds *all* the classes of problem we've had to deal with | 12:58.58 |
| charle | Also see some printer support XPS from microsoft. Is there any avantage to use it instead of PDF for printing? | 12:59.35 |
| kens | ROFL | 12:59.57 |
| | No, it is also not streamable, and has limited colour support compared to PDF. Its graphics model (espeically for transparency) is also more limited | 13:00.31 |
| charle | ok | 13:01.11 |
| | http://www.openprinting.org/driver/ljet4/ what is PCL5E? Is it PCL5% | 13:11.27 |
| | PCL5? | 13:11.33 |
| kens | The laserjet 4 is ancient, so it will be (at best) PCL5 | 13:11.42 |
| | That's why its says (at the top of the page) 'for PCL 5e printers' | 13:12.16 |
| charle | ok but there is not more up to date driver for PCL5 now? | 13:12.58 |
| kens | Why would there be ? The current software is PCl_XL | 13:13.11 |
| charle | because all printer doesn't support PXL | 13:13.52 |
| kens | Then they use PCL5 | 13:14.02 |
| charle | and then use ljet4 to print? | 13:14.21 |
| kens | The point is that PCL5 is an obselete language, so why would there be a newer device for it ? | 13:14.28 |
| charle | if I buy a new printer today then it should support newer language than PCL5? | 13:15.23 |
| kens | charle, I said already; PCL5 is *highly* device-dependent, the same PCL5 file can print in different ways on different *HP* printers. Ghostscript has a plethora of HP devices, all of them now quite old. You will have to try them out to see which one works for you. | 13:15.27 |
| | Or use the PCL-XL devices | 13:15.53 |
| | I do not work for HP, I cannot tell you which pritners support which languages | 13:16.12 |
| chrisl | I would note that the ljet4 device has been updated and improved a lot since the days of the original LaserJet 4 printer...... | 13:16.57 |
| | but not much in the last 8 years or so | 13:17.18 |
| charle | ok then I will try with postscript, PCL-XL or native PDF for the 2 printers I have | 13:17.18 |
| | wich postscript version is ps2write? | 13:21.10 |
| chrisl | Clue's in the name..... | 13:21.21 |
| kens | language level 2 | 13:21.24 |
| charle | :) | 13:21.52 |
| | is there any other reason than transparency why ps2write generate larger file than the pdf itself? | 18:14.26 |
| kens | Could be many reasons | 18:14.42 |
| charle | even if I use 300dpi? | 18:15.09 |
| kens | The resolution only matters if content is rendered to an image | 18:15.22 |
| charle | Am I wrong if I say PXL genarate smaller file than postscript? | 18:16.46 |
| kens | It might be, so much depends on the content. It is not possible to say. | 18:17.12 |
| charle | faster than his shadow lucky luke to answer the question! | 18:18.04 |
| kens | For example, due ot limitations of anohter manufacturers itnerpreter, we no longer compress the page content of PostScript. Because this other interpreter couldn't handle it properly | 18:18.05 |
| | That's an old comic chrisl | 18:18.58 |
| charle | he's too younger? :) | 18:19.19 |
| kens | Well the artist died in 2001 | 18:19.39 |
| charle | hehe I didn't know this fact! | 18:19.55 |
| HenryStiles | charle: usually our PXL output will be larger than PS (no font support in XL) | 18:23.32 |
| kens | HenryStiles : but there's the PostScript prolog, which is large, so a page with little actual content might come out larger in PostScript | 18:24.04 |
| HenryStiles | kens: true | 18:24.14 |
| kens | And we no longer compress the PostScript by default, so its larger than it used to be | 18:24.20 |
| | But like I said, so much depends on the content.... | 18:24.32 |
| HenryStiles | did you guys get the attachments? looks like you did, not sure about sebras, I'd like to delete it | 18:25.17 |
| kens | I picked it up, bets to check with sebras, but if eh didn't get it I can always bring it to SFO and give him a copy there | 18:25.46 |
| | Off again, night all | 18:29.29 |
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