Subject: [netatalk-admins] Printing from a Mac; Font problems?

From: Jules Bean <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 18:47:25 +0000 (GMT)

Hiya.

Apologies if I'm asking something that's been hashed over recently, the
mailing list archives appear to only go up to 1998.

I have recently got a HP DeskJet 890C (second hand), and it's the first
time I've had a printer for my Linux machine.  I have to set it up working
to my satisfaction, using magicfilter and the 'hpdj' ghostscript driver.

Next task was to set it up as a network printer accessible from my mac.
I'm using lprng at the moment, and I have a papd.conf like this:

hp:\
        :pr=|lpr -Plp:

hpwithppd:\
        :pr=|lpr -Plp:pd=/usr/share/ppd/en/HP_DeskJet_560C.ppd

One with and one without a PPD, I'm trying to work out if it makes any
difference. 

Anyway, it all works great.  

Until I choose a font on the Mac which gs doesn't have on the system, when
I see a postscript error.

Now, I'm pretty sure that if I was using a real laserwriter (the Mac,
obviously, thinks this print is a networked laserwriter) then the mac
would upload any fonts the printer didn't have as part of the postscript
file.  But this doesn't seem to be happening here? Is it, perhaps,
something to do with the ppd? Should I be using a PPD which admits that I
don't have many fonts locally?

Does anyone know if this is possible with netatalk/papd/gs? Or if there is
anywhere on the web that the issues are discussed in detail? I've looked
quite hard, but found nothing.  Would PPR be a better solution for me?

Many thanks for any help you can give,

Jules Bean

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From: Jules Bean <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 19:12:02 +0000 (GMT)

> to my satisfaction, using magicfilter and the 'hpdj' ghostscript driver.

[snip]

> I see a postscript error.

For any interested onlookers, the answer turned out to be that the fonts
concerned were truetype (as mac fonts tend to be), in some format which GS
5.1 didn't understand.  An 'upgrade' to 5.5 solved the problem.  Being a
debian developer, I'm not utterly happy about using aladdin GS, but
Aladdin assure me that 6.0 is due out soon (so 5.5 will become GNU).

My thanks go to Andras for helping me track this one down.

Jules