Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 19:36:10 +0200
From: Marcel Blokpoel <mb at aaabase.nl>
To: rildo <rildo at pragana.net>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: ML85-P Linux]

Hi,

> If you use the option "-l <a number> " 
> it may work as you want.
> (let's say: ml85p -l 150)

That was it, thanks! After careful measurement, 
I settled on an adjustment of 195.

>  I hope this helps.  If you are able to print, 
> please send me the patches
> you have made, so I can include them in the 
> next public release. Send me
> also detailed information on the model and 
> brand of your printer. Thank you.

brand: Texas Instruments
model: microLaser WIN/4

The (minor!) changes I made to your software to make it work for
the TI microLaser WIN/4 are attached in unified diff format
against the original ml85p-0.2.0 tarball contents. To apply the
patch simply run:

zcat ml85p-texas-patch.gz | patch -p0

I now get good quality output positioned exactly right. In fact,
the printer is back in active use right now, much to the
amazement of my colleagues who had almost thrown away the
printer. It had become useless as there are no drivers available
for this printer for any OS better than Windows 95. It had been
sitting for years before I found your software and modified it
to suit.

By the way, for some reason the printcap entry as suggested in
the tarball didn't work for me. The printing script, gv and
ml85p got called but for some reason the pipe failed causing the
process to "hang".

I hereby propose a different one which uses the "proper" way of
driving a non-standard printer instead of listing it as an
output filter. This is the one I use at the moment :

texas:lp=|/usr/local/bin/ml85-print:sd=/var/spool/lp0:sh:mx#0:

Note how the lp=| parameter supports using an "external" program
to print. Exactly what we need! Works for me this way... and
it's probably neater than using /dev/null and a filter. Look in
the printcap man-page for an explanation of this LP pipe option.

I did not include this change in the patch I attached as it's
probably unrelated to printer type. Whether or not you change
the advised printcap entry is of course up to you - I think my
LPD version is to blame for the problems I had with your
printcap entry. I don't know if my solution is universal, but if
it is you might want to consider it.  The LPD version I run is
the default in RedHat 7.0 and this is its version descriptor
(lpd -V) :

LPRng-3.7.4, Kerberos5, Copyright 1988-2000 Patrick Powell, 
<papowell at lprng.com>

thanks for your help and glad to contribute... I'll check your
site for updates now and then!

Marcel

Rildo Pragana <rildo@pragana.net>
Adventures in Linux Programming