Win'95 printer lock-ups & filters

[Gerald W. Carter]

> Printer lock-ups:
> [snip]...  What is unclear to me is why this is happening.
> I suspect Win '95 is the culprit and if this is just SOP while running
> networked printers I'll live with it, but I want to make sure I haven't
> missed anything.

I run lpd on Solaris 2.5.1 with Samba an no problems.  Sometimes the
print filters defined in /etc/printcap choke on certain files.  We tend
to use the Apple Laser Writer NTX II printer driver with postscript
printers rather than the HP postscript ones ( even if they are HP
printers ).  Just had good experience with their postscript output.  

Also will want to look out for the ^D at the beginning or end of the
file.  PC apps are bad about generating these  ( to try to reset to the
Postscrtip stack on the printer i think ).  Look at
	http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/doug 
for some handy-dandy print filters to handle this.

> Filters:
> While I'm on the subject, does either samba or lpd apply any filters to
> incoming print jobs from Win '95 clients?  My impression is that it

Only the ones specified in the /etc/printcap entries

> does not, but merely passes the information on to the printer as is,
> expecting the client to be using the appropriate driver.  One of my HP
> 4mp printers is setup as a postscript printer under Linux, but I have
> used both the standard & postscript Win '95 drivers and the output is
> identical.  I have a color inkjet that I don't have a Linux driver for,
> but I'm wondering if it matters as long as all the print jobs are
> coming from Win '95 clients and I don't try to print directly from
> Linux.

If you are passing the file to the printer as is from the windows 95 box
then there should not be any problem.





j-
________________________________________________________________________
                            Gerald ( Jerry ) Carter	
Engineering Network Services                           Auburn University 
jerry at eng.auburn.edu             http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/cartegw

       "...a hundred billion castaways looking for a home."
                                  - Sting "Message in a Bottle" ( 1979 )