Re: Using more than one driver for a laser printer?
On Tue, 2004-11-02 at 21:15 +0000, Adam Funk wrote:
> I have a Brother HL1450 laser printer on my parallel port. I used to
> use the Postscript driver but had problems with some documents
> overloading the printer's memory, so I switched to the hl1250 driver.
> Unfortunately LaTeX/dvips output doesn't look as good now---I assume
> this is because it is being converted from DVI to PS and then to
> Brother.
>
> So I'd like to know if there is any easy way to switch between them,
> just for local printing. I'm considering adding a second printer
> to /etc/printcap with the same device (/dev/lp0) and other
> specifications but a different driver, so I can use the lpr -P option
> as necessary. Is this idea good, bad or ugly? Should I use the same
> spool directory (subdirectory of /var/spool/lpd/)?
>
> (I have the following packages installed: magicfilter, cupsys,
> cupsys-bsd, cupsys-client, cupsys-driver-gimpprint,
> cupsys-driver-gimpprint-data, cupsys-pt.)
>
For a long time now I've been using an HP940 on CUPS. Since the hpijs
and gimpprint drivers both have their pluses and minuses, I defined two
printers using localhost:631/admin, ijs and gimp, using the hpijs and
gimprint drivers respectively, both of which ultimately point
to /dev/lp0. Thus, I can use lpr -P to select the driver I want to use
with the HP940. This has worked very well, the only gotcha being
whichever virtual printer I choose first (ijs or gimp) will completely
empty it's spool before printing the second spool. (This can be worked
around by holding the jobs on the first spool, CUPS will automatically
start the second spool).
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