[comp.sys.sgi] Programming a printer driver

uh311ae@sunmanager.lrz-muenchen.de (Henrik Klagges) (03/24/91)

Hi,
I just got a brand-new 5000 color sublimation printer into my office.
Right now, it only supports screen captures, via a digitizer. However,
I would like to write a driver ...
Any one any idea how to do that ??
   - communicating with the parallel port
   - reading iris.rgb-files and uncompressing their encoding
   - programming the Hitachi 5000

Thanks !
henrik Klagges

blbates@AERO36.LARC.NASA.GOV (Brent Bates ViGYAN AAD/TAB) (03/25/91)

   What I have done in the past is to use an image format that is produced
by a lot of our "standard" software as my image standard format.  I have
good documentation for this "standard" so I know all the in & outs of it,
which is unlike the iris.rgb files.  When we got our Tektronics 4693D
thermal hard copy unit, I got a device driver manual from Tektronics that
fully documented the printer commands and wrote a conversion utility that
converts my "standard" image files to 4693D files.  I then use lpr with
the parallel port to send files to the printer.  If you have good
documentation for everything, you can do almost anything.

	Brent L. Bates
	NASA-Langley Research Center
	M.S. 361
	Hampton, Virginia  23665-5225
	Phone:(804) 864-2854          FAX:(804) 864-6792
	E-mail: blbates@aero36.larc.nasa.gov or blbates@aero8.larc.nasa.gov