HP2PBM

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NAME

hp2pbm,hp2hifax,hp2lofax,hp2sun,hp2e24 - Translate HPLJ codes to to Postscript or PBM

SYNOPSIS

hp2pbm [-v] [-V] [-p] [-c] [-rpbmfile] [-dx[,y]] < HP codes

DESCRIPTION

The hp2pbm program (linked to any of its aliases) is a program that interprets HP PCL (Hewlett Packard Printer Control Language - the language of HP Laserjets) escape code sequences. Hp2pbm can then generate an english description of the codes, translate the input into Postscript, or generate PBM files (Jef Poskanzer's Portable Bitmap Format). hp2pbm -V prints the version string. Hp2pbm is essentially a version of the hpinterp program that has been extended to optionally emit PBM. Hpinterp is a part of psroff This can be considered to be an ``after market'' optional upgrade to psroff. Hp2pbm will accept input from any HP PCL-generating program, such as psroff (C/A/T troff or ditroff converter), jetroff (ditroff converter), WordPerfect, CorelDraw, including (some) built in and all downloaded fonts (except compressed ones) and including built in and downloaded graphics and rasters. hp2pbm can be used to drive a number of different configurations, such as Postscript printers, Klaus Schallhorn's faxpak (to transmit faxes using a fax modem), or other devices using PBM converters, such as Epson 24 pin printers, Sun displays, 3b1 consoles etc. If the -v option is specified, hp2pbm will emit english descriptions of all of the HP PCL escape sequences to standard output. This is useful for debugging HP PCL emitting programs. The -p option tells hp2pbm to emit Postscript to standard output. (Specifying both -v and -p at the same time is rather confusing) Note: unless hp2pbm is used with the rest of the psroff utility set (namely, lj2ps and pk2ps), hp2pbm does not support fonts that were downloaded in the HP Laserjet print stream. Unless the -r option is specified, hp2pbm will collect any fonts in the HP PCL and save them in files in a directory called ``./FONTS'', with the nameing convention fn where n is the HP PCL font ID number. The ``FONTS'' directory should be created manually before running hp2pbm. A file called fn.desc is also created in the ``FONTS'' directory, which contains a description of each character. If the -c option is specified, an ASCII drawing will be made of each glyph in the font in the .desc file. This is very useful for examining HP PCL fonts, whether they are individual font files, or are embedded in HP PCL print streams. If the -rvalue option is specified, hp2pbm (hp2??fax and hp2e24) creates PBM files. The associated argument is the basename for the generated files. The first page is named ``value.0'', second ``value.1'' etc. The -d option specifies a resolution not automatically assumed from argv[0]. It is specified as -dx,y where x is the horizontal resolution in dots per inch, and y is the vertical resolution in dots per inch. If the ,y clause is omitted, it defaults to the x value. The default dots per inch for Hp2pbm is 300. Hp2pbm is also linked to several different names as a convenience for supplying the dots per inch. The names are: hp2hifax (high resolution FAX), hp2lofax (low resolution FAX) hp2sun (Sun mono display) and hp2e24 (Epson 24 pin printer at 180 dpi).

FILES

%%LIBDIR%%/BITMAPS rasters, patterns and builtin font clones.

WARNINGS

Hp2pbm's handling of downloaded macros is not fully tested. Compressed fonts (Laserjet II) and scalable built in fonts (Laserjet III) are not supported. Except for these limitations Hp2pbm should be fully compatible with Laserjet II printers. PBM file sizes are resolution dependent (legal size or A4 paper at 300DPI: as much as 1.2Mb for each page). The -p option was implemented soley as a test jig for the HP PCL output option of psroff -Tlj without having a laserjet printer. The Postscript generating code isn't complete, but this will probably be rectified in future. Hp2ps will not create a FONTS directory if one doesn't exist, and will die if there isn't one.

Hp2ps -p will attempt to do something sane with selecting a font by characteristic, but be warned, these use the printer's built-in fonts (which are likely to be radically different from a LJ's), so the widths may be different and the mappings of non-ASCII characters certainly will be.

Most Postscript printers have relatively little memory for additional bitmapped fonts. Do not be surprised by VMerrors from your Postscript printer if you've selected more than a few fonts in your Laserjet output.

AUTHORS

This manual page and the HP PCL parsing code was written by Chris Lewis, as was psroff. The PBM generation code was written by Klaus Schallhorn.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 06:56:38 GMT, December 12, 2024