World: r3wp

when printing to lpt1

interesting... what decides that %//prn is LPT1?

dunno

But never had a problem

interesting... but ok, now my focus is to make it work on any printer. 
as mentioned it is fed through ghostscript. when I read about GSPrint 
it almost seems like it does the same thing. it even uses the same 
driver.

%//lpt1 is also possible, but according to google, %//prn diverts 
to the first availabel printer

from Andrew Martin

Printer: func [Text [string!] /Page] [
    secure [
        %//prn [allow write]
    ]
    write %//prn Text
    ; Append Carriage Return (CR) and Page Feed.
    if Page [write/binary %//prn "^(0D)^(page)"]
    Text
]

so %prn is a DOS/win32 thing that REBOL just uses?

it might not work under Windows 98

I've been informed that we are not using win98 anymore (yay!)

this is what I had to do for usb printers .. http://synapsedirect.com/forums/thread/396.aspx

and so %//prn will still work ...

Maybe this is even going thru the windows printer driver

so might fix your problems as well.

it's a confusing subject, because there are 20 different ways to 
print :-)

well, if the way you're doing it now is not working ... I suggest 
you try my ways :)

the problem is that the new printer is not a postscript printer.

Huh??

the HP 1200 ?

sorry if I confused you. no the HP1200 one is no longer being used

I ranted about it, because I could not print directly to it, but 
had to use the adobe driver for that.

well, then there is very little option except to use ghostscript

now with a new printer, I have to create a completely different setup 
with ghostscript.

the only problem is the speed. I really wish I could speed it up.

faster PC

what printer do you have now?

HP Laserjet 1505.

well, the bitmap it sends is over 2 MB in size. that's pretty huge 
for a pure b/w bitmap I think.

who's decision was it to purchase that?

mine and budget. we can't afford a better printer.

you need to create a PCL driver :)

it seems gsprint provides many more options... I will have to investigate 
that.

yeah :-(

cheap host based printer

now if they stopped that winprinter crap and had postscript as standard 
in all printers... the hardware to do that should be fairly cheap 
for that today.

so it will always be slower than a PS printe.

yes, I don't expect it to be as fast as PS, but this is like... 25-50 
times slower. :-)

do you need to print as soon as possible?

You do know that ghostscript can convert ps to pcl ??

and then you can dump the resulting prn file to the printer vs creating 
a bitmap??

Since the printer driver is host based, it would be doing the same 
thing as well.

I did not know that.

if it can that makes my task simpler.

the product description says that the HHP 1505 is a host based PCL 
printer

yes it is. I think all HP printers are.

no

well, as long as this one is.. :-)

try sending some raw PCL to the printer to see what happens

If it doesn't understand it .. then it's just a dumb printer

with a PCL driver