OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: roderickv on July 13, 2004, 12:13:51 pm
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OK, after find just the right software and ROM, I now have just about the perfect machine . I can go with out my laptop for most trips, except for one problem... I can't print from the Zaurus! I've searched through the site threads but I find little on the subject;
Has anyone figured out (or is working on) a way to print from the Zaurus? Most of the other good handhelds I've owned (all substandard to the Zaurus of course) had the ability to print directly from the infrared port to a printer that had an infrared port like the HP LJ 2100 for example. Even the old Zaurus ZR8500 (totally different machine) I owned could do this, But the new Zauri can't. I would even settle for a way to print wireless over an 80211b or g network, that would be great also. Are there no great minds working on this?
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I have tried to get CUPS working on Cacko many months ago and failed, but you might want to check these packages out:
CUPS
http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=1742 (http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=1742)
PIMPrint
http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=772 (http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=772)
LPRNG
http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=389 (http://zsi2.stonekeep.com/index.php?v=d&a=389)
Hope this helps!
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I think I read (in this forum?) that you can print text files over IR to a printer (assuming the printer has an IR sensor).
What I do on trips is bring along a CF or SD reader and borrow a PC when I need to print.
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What I do on trips is bring along a CF or SD reader and borrow a PC when I need to print.
Yes that is what I am forced to do right now. I carry around a Jump Drive Trio http://www.lexar.com/dynamic-frameset_jd.h...ve/jd_trio.html (http://www.lexar.com/dynamic-frameset_jd.html?http://www.lexarmedia.com/jumpdrive/jd_trio.html)
which works great, but it is a pain to have to find a free PC, transfer my document to the SD card and then put the SD card into the Jumpdrive and then put the jumpdrive into the PC and then bring up the document and print it... I would rather point my Z at the printer and hit ctl-P
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I have tried to get CUPS working on Cacko many months ago and failed, but you might want to check these packages out:
Thanks I will definitely check them out. But at first glance, none of them seem to be real, and complete solutions.
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We had a chat about this on the devnet a long while back. I can't remember what was decided. Try a search for ghostscript.
Si
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If your printer has an IP address, you might try to figure out how to telnet a page to it. For grins I tried it just now to my printer. I looked at my /etc/cups/printers.conf file on my desktop and saw my printer with the following entry:DeviceURI socket://172.16.100.205:9100
So from a command line I typed in
telnet 172.16.100.205 9100
And from the prompt I typed in
"this is a test" then hit ^] to terminate the connection.
the good news was that I got the page to print out but it had a strange header and footer, both the same which looked like the 2 of clubs from a card deck.
If you could figure out how to pipe or cat a file's contents to the telnet command you would at least get your output. then you just need to find out what the proper header should be and add that to your file (maybe look at lpr source code)
Definetly a hack solution.
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Port 9100 is a common port to talk to printers. A HP print driver should be able to be configured to send stuff down that port and print maybe PCL type data streams as well as normal text. CUPS should be able to help here.
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This is all well and good, but unless the applications themselves are willing to output either ps or raster type data which CUPS can use then it's not really going to go anywhere - I think this was the conclusion which we drew before.
I'm not sure wqhat the answer is. Obviously some stuff will work and can be printed as text. Perhaps another method would be to take screenshots (assuming we don't have the source code to enable raster output) and then feed those through.
As I said before, ghostscript compiled without troubles, so we should also be able to print ps and pdf files at least, assuming CUPS works okay (it certainly compiled okay).
Si
P.S. Here are the (old) links from the devnet, which might add some more to the discussion:
http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...&hl=ghostscript (http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?showtopic=4648&hl=ghostscript)
http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...&hl=ghostscript (http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?showtopic=4689&hl=ghostscript)
http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...&hl=ghostscript (http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?showtopic=2375&hl=ghostscript)
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It seems that printing (cups, lprng, smbprint, etc.) still doesn't work with the standard SHARP rom on my Zaurus SL-C860... I might try setting up my own cross-compiling environment in the future, but for now I haven't time.
Since I'm using Linux print servers, I can use SSH for printing:
cat myfile.ps | ssh username@server lpr
When using CUPS on the server, it should understand several other file formats as well (not just postscript).
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Somewhat on a tangent to the above, but Sharp Japan have recently got some printer drivers out for the clamshell models.
They are not clever, just output via infra red to A7 printers. Do a screen dump as far as I can make out.
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Couple of suggestions, if anyone is realy serious about printing from the Zaurus.
OPTION 1
Will Perl programming language run on the Zaurus, if so it maybe possible to recomplie Net::LPR, so you can print to a network printer, maybe over WiFi. To use it you will need Perl 5.6.1 and PerlStart (download from http://www.science-computing.de/o.f...perl/perl5.html) (http://www.science-computing.de/o.f...perl/perl5.html)).
The program lpr.pl (http://perl.jonallen.info/bin/view/Main/EPOCLPRClient) is a simple Perl script to send a file (default is C:\PrintFile) to a remote print server. It is set up to accept PostScript files, however if you have an alternative driver for your printer (e.g. PCL4) then these can also be used by setting up a 'raw' print queue that does not process the data in any way.
If anyone wants to write a native version of LPR, the protocol is documented in www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1179.html.
OPTION 2
Download win32lpr which is a free implementation of LPR with source, for Windows & recompile for the Zaurus, written by Angus Duggan.
Mike
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I can't afford my own printer but the printer who works down the road does a nice job on 30 bond paper silkscreening. But it costs too much for me to print often.
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Doing it the other way round...
My USB printer cable doesn't quite stretch to my laptop so I want to (temporarily) use my Zaurus C760 as a network printer server. If I plug my printer into the Z's USB port, I want to send jobs to the printer from other machines on the WIFI network.
It's got a CF wireless card which works fine, so I guess this shouldn't be too hard to do. The lpr formatting should be handled by the printing client (in my case an OS X powerbook).
CUPS and SMB .conf files? Am I looking in the right direction?
Or am I kidding myself?
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Your Z needs to have the USB printer kernel module to talk to the printer. Assuming that is in place you will need to get lpd or cupsys setup as a print server. It can all be done, but it will take some work.
Good Luck.