"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

WinPrinter Work-around

From harmbehrens on Sat, 01 May 1999

Hello, is there any work-around to get a gdi printer (Star Wintype 4000) to work with Linux :-?
Harm

Save the file to some supported format (something that MS Windows can read), copy the file to a Windows system (to which your GDI printer is attached) and/or reboot your system into MS Windows, and use that to print.

--- Alternatively I suppose you could configure a Windows system to share its printer and use Samba (smbclient) to print to that.

Those are WORKAROUNDS.

I presume that these are NOT what you wanted to hear. However, there is no way that I know of to support a Winprinter without running drivers that are native to MS Windows (and its GDI --- graphics device interface --- APIs).

I think that the development of GDI printers was a devious and clever trick by Microsoft. Tie the customer AND the printer manufacturers inextricably to Microsoft's SOFTWARE and leave them both vulnerable to MS upgrades for the lives of their products. It's diabolically clever.

Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 42 June 1999

HTML transformation by Heather Stern of Starshine Techinical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

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