On an older SCO-Unix system we have, there is a wonderful program called laserlp, which sends files to the terminal (terminal emulator's) attached VT102 printer and fits even wide-column reports into a portrait-printed page on HP printers. I Googled for this utility, and cannot find its origins, so I am thinking it came with SCO.

I have a linux-equivalent program that will send files to the attached VT100 printer

void ptr_on()
{
printf("%c[5i",27);
}

However, my attempts to turn the alter the internal codes in the HP printer have failed.

void ptr_on()
{
char esc_buf[6] = {0};
esc_buf[0] = (char ) 40;
esc_buf[1] = (char ) 115;
esc_buf[2] = (char ) 49;
esc_buf[3] = (char ) 50;
esc_buf[4] = (char ) 72;

printf("%c[5i", 27);
printf("%c%s", 27, esc_buf);
}


Has anyone written a utility that will pass print jobs to the VT102 printer and sent internal esc codes to an HP printer, and would you be willing to share your knowledge?

tnx
cmn

P.S. Here is a link to the codes I used:

http://www.dragon-it.co.uk/links/hp_pcl_codes.htm

don't get exactly what you want, do you want to control the printer
or get a nice formatted text?

if you want something to format text nicely,

have a look into a2ps it is very good and even does syntax highlighting
on C code, perl etc.

I want to send a report that exceeds the width of portrait to an attached (using telnet/ssh terminal emulation) terminal. In addition to sending the document to the attached printer, laserlp must be sending additional escape sequences to the HP printer, so that it prints a wide report in portrait mode, using a hardware font that will accommodate the extra width.

I don't want to "pretty up" the report. The report is formatted by Informix. I just want to send the report to that attached terminal and set the HP's internal mode.

I've narrowed the problem down. The second command <ESC>(16H is printed instead of being interpreted. I'd appreciate any help trying to figure out why the command is not being interpreted.