Calcomp Calgraphics Plotter

[Brian D. McGrew]

Anyone gotten this to run under Fedora?  We've got one that we need and
it's too old for any of the Windows drivers (98/NT was the latest).  So
I'm thinking I could make a PDF from my Windows application and print it
on Fedora if I can get the plotter to work.  I read something in the
documentation for it that said it requires a vector driver.  How can I
make this beast work?

Thanks!

:b!

[Chris Mohler]

As one that has had to struggle with ancient plotters:

What does the "beast" speak?

Common answers would be: PTL (plotter transfer lang), HP-GL (hp
graphics lang), PS (postscript, duh..), or possibly HP-RTL(hp raster
tranfer lang).

I'd wish for PS and do "cat file.ps > dev/lp0" and see what happens.
Never seen a Calgraphics, so you probably won't be *that* lucky.  I
guess what I'm getting at is: if you can figure out what format the
plotter wants it's input in, there are a number of ways to make it
happen in cups, ghostscript, etc....

Were you lucky enough to get a "sample file" with the plotter drivers ...?

Chris

[John Wendel]

Brian D. McGrew wrote:
> Anyone gotten this to run under Fedora?  We’ve got one that we need and 
> it’s too old for any of the Windows drivers (98/NT was the latest).  So 
> I’m thinking I could make a PDF from my Windows application and print it 
> on Fedora if I can get the plotter to work.  I read something in the 
> documentation for it that said it requires a vector driver.  How can I 
> make this beast work?
>
> Thanks!
>
> :b!

Try this web page, it is a program to convert postscript/pdf to hp-gl, 
which you should then be able to feed to your plotter. I haven't tried it.

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/pstoedit.1.html

Regards,

John

[Chris Mohler]

That's good - if it does speak HPGL, you might also try using the HP
designjet drivers.

If you can print from cups, its (somewhat) easy to share the printer
with your 'doze bax via samba.

Chris