How do I use PCL macros with Unix and other non-PC systems?
Let's suppose you created a document in Word or PageMaker and
then used Forms Electric in
Create
mode to save the overlay as TEST. You will then have on disk an
overlay file TEST.OVL and possibly a soft font file TEST.FNT. To use
this overlay from a Unix or AS/400 system you must now use the
supplied DOS
Download utility to "wrap" the macro and assign it a PCL
macro id. (This is so the printer can identify and track it in it's
memory). So, to give it the id 1 use:
C> download test /i:1 /o:test.prt
You now have a spool file TEST.PRT which contains the font file
and overlay together topped and tailed with the PCL commands to
assign the macro the id 1. This file you can upload to your Unix or
AS/400 system to store and download from there.
To get the overlay into your printer from your server you can
probably use the Unix lp command. As this file can contain
raw binary data be sure to use the lp options to spool the file
without carriage-return or form feed translation, ie. in raw mode.
On some Unix systems you can use lp -oraw test.prt etc.
Spooling the overlay this way will download it to your printer's
memory where it will remain dormant until your application calls it.
Your Unix application will need to send a PCL command to the
printer at the start of its job to instruct the printer to merge
this overlay with the application data. The most common command to
use is <esc>&f1y4X Be sure to get the lower and upper- case
syntax correct. Here <esc> is ASCII 27 the escape character and the
1 is the macro id to correspond that we used in the Download command
line. You can put this command anywhere on the first page of data
you want the form to be used.
A PCL printer reset command <esc>E at the end of the job
(after the last form feed) will turn off the merging but leave the
overlay in the printer's memory. This step is optional.
How do I use PCL macros with duplex printing?
There's no direct support for duplex in Forms Electric. The best
you can do is with an application such as Microsoft Word where you
can embed printer commands into the document as Print Fields. You
first need to download two macros to the printer, with different
macro ids, one for the front side and one for the back. Then in Word
you create a two page document to match. On the first page you
insert a Field of the type PRINT and use the code:-
PRINT 27 "&f1y4X"
On the second page you use:-
PRINT 27 "&f2y4X"
This assumes your macros are numbered with ids 1 and 2. Then
when you print the document will trigger the forms to be merged with
your two page duplex output. You don't need Forms Electric loaded
for this part either.
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How do I save multiple pages to disk as raster images using
Visual PCL/2?
Visual PCL/2 will only let you save
the currently viewed page to disk as a raster image file in Windows
BMP format. If you want to convert a whole multi-page PCL print to a
multi-page TIF image (or multiple single page TIF images) then use
the
JetPCL product instead.
What are the best Windows LaserJet PCL printer driver settings
for Pcl2pdf?
How do I capture PCL data output from Windows
LaserJet printer drivers?
Pcl2pdf doesn't offer port capturing but you may be
able to configure your Windows PCL printer driver to output to
FILE and capture the data this way.
An alternative option might be to use
Virtual Port Monitor from Alphatronics, Inc. Please note that we
cannot recommend or endorse this product however.
How can I convert PDF (Portable Document
Format) documents to PCL?
The only tried and trusted PDF parser is Adobe®
Acrobat® itself. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, are
trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. No one else comes close to their level
of support for PDF.
To generate PCL from Adobe® Acrobat® you have to
automate printing via a Windows LaserJet PCL printer driver. Adobe offers a
number of SDKs and libraries but you can also use command line options with
Adobe® Acrobat® itself.
C> "C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" filename.pdf
Runs Acrobat and displays a file.
C> "C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /p filename.pdf
Runs Acrobat and prints a file. The Print
dialog is displayed however.
C> "C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /p/h filename.pdf
Runs Acrobat and prints a file without
displaying the Print dialog. Acrobat opens though but does not display
the document.
C> "C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /t filename.pdf printername
drivername portname
Runs Acrobat and prints a file to a named
printer while suppressing the print dialog box, then terminates.
Use "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat
6.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" instead for the Adobe Reader.
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