Printing text files

[Richard Hector <rhector@actrix.gen.nz>]

Hi all,

This I think should be simple ...

I have an old dot matrix printer - ugly, slow, but cheap and handles
lineflow.

When I set it up with CUPS, I used the Epson driver, but that seems to
insist on using Postscript - converts my text file to Postscript and
then renders it using Ghostscript (presumably) to print. This slows
things down, and the output is even uglier (IMHO) than the native
printer font (which is matched to the resolution.

I then set it to Raw, but that ignores page size; it just keeps going
over the perforations.

Is there some good way to get the best of both worlds? I want my pages
neatly broken at the perforations, and I'd rather the system kept the
required records, so that after every job, the printer is lined up at
the top of the next page.

Page numbers and filename headers would be nice too, though I think
emacs adds its own, and I don't want two - I guess 2 queues would solve
that.

The 'pr' utility looks like it will do some of what I want - can I just
install that as a filter somewhere?

Oh - and I like the CUPS networking stuff; I'd rather not leave that
behind if possible.

Am I asking the impossible here?

Any pointers on FMs to R, FAQs, HOWTOs etc would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Richard