SMB, CUPS -whatever- print oddities

P

pry3i

chemical precursor
MY pb pismo 10.2.6 on campus and am trying to print to THEIR HP laserjet 5si...
NT network, i have the IP of the printer, printserver name, domain, ad nauseum.

i can send jobs via samba and/or CUPS, but i am running into a situation that
the printing of the file is on one line.

sort of like this...

%!PS-Adobe-3.0%RBINumCopies: 1%%Pages: (atend)

(but the percent signs seem to equate to line feed with no carrage return, so its
really more staggered than this example)

then, blank page after blank page.

i seem to remember something like this when trying to print a UNIX VI file under
solaris - where i couldnt use lp - i had to use unix2dos???

i've looked at the macosxhints how to
i've installed cups.
i cant figure out whats haywire about this. any suggestions?
 
Well, cups is the built-in MacOSX printing control system -- you shouldn't have to install it.
You are having a postscript problem -- rule of thumb, the windows printer needs to have a postscript driver installed, just like on the Mac.
HTH
 
Hi, John Philip,
Does this just apply to printing in an NT environment? I've only printed through 2000 and XP and have never had this problem. (I do notice that there is an advanced preference in Properties that includes raw and text and other "encodings.")
 
Originally posted by gsahli
Hi, John Philip,
Does this just apply to printing in an NT environment? I've only printed through 2000 and XP and have never had this problem. (I do notice that there is an advanced preference in Properties that includes raw and text and other "encodings.")
Click to expand...

I'm not sure - I always have my customers change all prefs to ASCII as opposed to Binary in all printing dialogs - to be sure to avoid the problem.
I suppose you have to go into the deeper descriptions of 2000 and XP - but my immidiate bet is that the same applies.
We're down on the printing protocol and the encoding itself.
There are two protocol encodings involved here:
TBCP - Tagged Binary Core protocol
SP - Standard Protocol
They are in no way compatible...
The question is then: What protocol does the receiving unit expect?
If one sends data in the DLC or LPR protocols, chances are that the receiving unit will expect the data to be either ASCII (most common) or TBCP binary.
Apple transmits binary in SP = the wonderful experience of having 2000 pages with just a single character in the top corner as a result (which I suppose is good if you know a kindergarten - they will have lots of paper to make drawings on..
(-;<
The HP and Lexmark devices f. inst. are 'designed' to interpret binary as TBCP - and thus will never (according to their own design dept's) be able to interpret SP binary data correct.
To avoid all these speculations = set all prefs in printing dialogs to ASCII - and keep them there.
Then you are 95% sure of proper output at all times.
(By the way: The good ole' Apple Share IP had a 'button' that could translate binary to ASCII - so when setting up a printspooler que, one just checked this option. With the risk of being considered nostalgic: WE WANT THAT BUTTON BACK IN OSX SERVER!! - because we are up against an 'industri' standard (Read: industri fowl up), that probably will never be corrected or correctable 'in the field'....

(Sorry to sound like a grumpy ole' man - I make my living out of correcting such problems for customers - but a thing like the above problem is just not what I consider part of good service - the industri ought to have made it 'compatible'.

John Philip
 
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