Brother HL-L2340D printer and lpd?

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 4 May 2020 15:10:58 -0400, Kurt Hackenberg wrote:
> On 2020-05-04 02:50, Polytropon wrote:
> 
> > However, it's really scary that a printer like the one mentioned
> > here does not seem to understand ASCII text, even though it
> > supports PCL standard (as shown on the specification page).
> 
> 
> PCL was originally ASCII with proprietary escape sequences mixed in, but 
> that spec page says that printer understands PCL 6, which apparently is 
> a stack-based graphics language like PostScript, except binary. It's 
> supposed to include backward compatibility with PCL 5, but doesn't 
> always. So possibly what that printer understands has nothing to do with 
> ASCII.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_Command_Language
> 
> I don't like it either, but there is heavy pressure to hold down the 
> cost of printers.

Thank you, that is an important note! PCL backward compatibility
might be the reason why the printer accepts PCL intended for a
Laserjet 4 (I don't know, maybe PCL 3?), but doesn't actually
print anything. So the printer filter will have to explicitely
output PCL 6. That could be achieved using a different output
device for gs, or using CUPS in combination with the PPD file
provided by Brother. This of course brings you all the "joy"
of using CUPS... ;-)

Maybe this thread can also help:

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2017-July/277994.html


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...