on 15:05 Tue 05 Apr, m.roth at 5-cent.us (m.roth at 5-cent.us) wrote: > Well, today, I feel like a real, old time sysadmin. Now, I didn't have to > write a driver in assembly for the printer, but.... > > We got this huge, 44" HP Designjet z3200ps printer. Only supports Win and > Mac. Fine, I hang it off of one of our servers on a subnet (at $0.96/foot > paper, we're the only ones who print on it....). Then I'm thinking that > all I really need is a .ppd. My co-worker, who's also got a Mac, d/l's the > Mac driver and extracts the .ppd. The Windoze one is apparently buried in > a dll, you see.... > > I then figured out how to hack a .ppd. > > First, I found an ifdef construction, for Mac-only information. That > worked on the small paper (24" width roll, "small"). Then the real paper, > the 42" stuff. Why HP sells a 44" printer, but 42" paper, dunno, but.... > there's no option for large format printing. After a pointless waste of > half an hour on HP's "live chat" (not sure how many chats the guy was on), > he tells me there's no driver. I call HP support, and talk to someone who > seems to know a little more... but is sorta fuzzy on .ppd's, and then > tells me that there ought to be an option to set a custom size, and seems > to confirm what I read (in vi) in the ppd, that there are no settings for > 42" paper. > > So I hacked it, and added settings for 42"x34", and 42"x60" (the usual > size for posters). A lot was cut, paste, and substitute, but the one > gotcha is that the actual paper size that the printer sees is in points. > Once I got that, it worked beautifully. > > Anyone needs any info about hacking a .ppd, feel free to email me; if you > have a beast of a z3200ps, I'll be glad to send you a copy of mine. A task with a very laudable history: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html -- Dr. Ed Morbius, Chief Scientist / | Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist | When you seek unlimited power Krell Power Systems Unlimited | Go to Krell!