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apsfilter - Written April 17, 2000
I installed apsfilter mainly to be able to use an old Canon BJ-100 Bubble Jet Printer. I did a search on Freebsd.Org for Ink Jet and one of the first few items was aps filter. I studied it and
decided this was the ticket. I however was not prepared for what was in store for me.
Since apsfilter is in the ports collection I figured it would be a pretty straight forward install,
WRONG. Since I am a dialup connection I spent the next 6+ hours waiting for it to download the 30, give or take, required ports to install. It however did do a straight forward install and then I just
needed to make it work.
The setup file for apsfilter is in /usr/local/apsfilter directory. The file you need to run is SETUP and will step you through the process.
1.kill the process for lpd
2.su
3.cd /usr/local/apsfilter
4../SETUP (yes it's upper case)
5.follow the instructions, there will be specific areas for you to know
specific details about your hardware.
Basic Info
lpt0 - this is your first printer port (sorry to be really basic but not all
of us are experts).
You need to know the printers resolution IE: 180x180, 300x300 etc. (I cheated
and used default since it was a really old printer)
After all the information has been input to your computer select "T" which will print a test page. (your printer must be connected to the computer
and also turned on)
If the test page prints out to your satisfaction then you can hit the "C" key and that will write a new printcap file. (printcap is in the /etc directory and really you should
make a copy of it. cp printcap printcap.save)
if the test page is not satisfactory go back through the options and print another test page and save the setup you were happiest with. Remember use the
"C" key to save your setup.
When all is saved and you have finished the setup program for apsfilter you need to fire lpd up again. When you type lpd you may get an error on your
printcap. Something about ld and ld are using the same spool directory. cd to the /etc dir and rm printcap and go through the setup again and when you are done refire lpd.
You may want to put
lpd in your rc.local file and have it fire on boot which will take the burden off of you to remember to fire it each time you reboot.
I hope this will help you to use apsfilter as it is really a sweet
printer filter setup and will allow you to not only print great text files using a bubble jet printer but will allow you to print graphics out as well.
gizmo@defcon1.org
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