Generating a PCL file from PDF file

[Gregory P. Ennis]

On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 18:41 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Gregory P. Ennis writes:
> 
> > Everyone,
> > 
> > I have one last remaining Microsoft function that I would like to
> > transfer to my Linux system.  Once this is done I will most likely be
> > able to turn off my Microsoft system or better yet put a Fedora Core $
> > on it.  
> > 
> > I need to be able to create a PCL file out of a Word, PDF, or other file
> > type.  What I have done with Windows XP is to  print the file to a PCL
> > printer like a HP4si.  To Create the PCL file all I have to do is to
> > check the text file box on the print menu.  When this is done Windows
> > captures the print stream to a file instead of sending it to the
> > printer.
> > 
> > The reason I need to do this is to create PCL macros that can be
> > downloaded to a PCL printer.  I am sure there is an easy way to do this
> > in Fedora Core 3 but I have not figured it out yet.  Your help would be
> > appreciated.
> 
> You can use pdf2ps to convert the PDF file to Postscript, then you can use 
> ghostscript to convert Postscript to a PCL file.
> 
> Ghostscript is a bit of a pain to use, but once you have it worked out the 
> right options, the process will go smoothly.
> 

Sam and others,

Thanks for your response.  I have tried to convert this pdf file but it
will not convert to a ps.  I even upgraded from ghostscript 7.07 to 8.15
and still had the problem.  It looks like there is a font problem :

[greg at dev twcc]$ /gpe/ghostscript/ghostscript-8.15/bin/gs -sDEVICE=ljet4
-SOutputFile=./New73.pcl -dBATCH -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE ./New73.pdf
   **** Warning:  An error occurred while reading an XREF table.
   **** The file has been damaged.  This may have been caused
   **** by a problem while converting or transfering the file.
   **** Ghostscript will attempt to recover the data.
   **** Warning: Fonts with Subtype = /TrueType should be embedded.
                 But Arial-BoldMT is not embedded.

The reading I have done on the ghostscript news groups seems to imply
that this is a file problem and not a ghostscipt problem. The file is
readable, printable and displays but will not convert.  

Do you know of a way to capture the printer stream to an pcl printer.
That is really what I know would work, but I can not figure out a way to
do this with Linux

Thanks a lot for your help!

Greg