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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
In June, I started this thread
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....115bcb88c891bb "Looking for new printer with old HPGL compatibility" asking about a new printer which would allow me to print out the PCL printer files produced by DOS-based Xerox Ventura Publisher 2.0. Thanks for all the knowledge and suggestions. Thanks especially to Bob Headrick--of course you're right, the HP LJ II was a PCL printer, not an HPGL printer. Cheap (host driven) printers such as the LJ 1018 don't understand PCL I eventually purchased an HP Color Laser Jet 2605dn. This does colo(u)r nicely enough for my photo needs, and a fine job on old Ventura Publisher 2.0 files. Although it cost close to $Canadian 500, it came with toner for 2,000 mono and 2,000 colour pages. It is a large unit, reminds me of a PT Cruiser, which you may regard as "cool" or "gross", depending upon your taste and year. It is completely quiet when not in use, and the software even allowed me to turn off the "recalibration" feature, so that it does not turn itself on every two hours, chugging away and wasting toner. My main complaint is that HP forced me to install IE before it would install the printer drivers. However, I noticed that it still does not do white print on a dark background, nor does it print colour fonts. I am referring only to Ventura Publisher 2 here. So I'm wondering ... Is there a Ventura Publisher printer driver that will provide those capabilities? I realize that Ventura Publisher 2 is over fifteen years old and no manufacturer would make a driver for it. However, since the PCL to LJ II driver works fine, perhaps there is another driver which will retain those qualities but do even better. The 2605dn says that it speaks PCL6 (and I think also PCL 5 and 4). In ye olde days, there was software called "Publisher's Powerpak" from Atech Software, but I think that's history for over a decade. PP would provide Ventura drivers (well, the Ventura version would!) for unsupported printers, and support added features for some already-supported printers. I kind of regret not hearing about it in 1991. Thanks also for links to GhostPCL, and also to PrintFile, which is what I use to print the print-to-file VP 2 files. VP 2 is expecting a parallel printer, it would not come even close to understanding what a network printer is. -- Jonathan Berry |
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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
Sorry for replying to my own first. It was actually the freeware
PCLReader which I used to show the printer files on my computer screen, not GhostPCL. It works very well. There is a pay version with more features. The expire-ware SWIFT is also very good and I miss its full pixel-for-pixel screen representation. But the SWIFT full packages are very expensive, for a home user. One more datapoint: it is the Ventura HP LJ II printer driver which makes the various features of Ventura not be visible, as demonstrated in CAPABILI.CHP. There's nothing wrong with the 2605dn printer. So basically I need a Xerox Ventura 2.0 driver for a more advanced PCL (higher compatibility level?) than HP LJ II. TIA -- Jonathan Berry |
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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
Jonathan Berry wrote:
asking about a new printer which would allow me to print out the PCL printer files produced by DOS-based Xerox Ventura Publisher 2.0. I sent you an email, perhaps it looked like spam. Anyway, I'm curious as to why you want to use PCL. Ventura GEM has a PostScript driver and prints to a PS printer (including your HP 2605dn) or file, and that can be distilled to PDF -- I do this all the time. Once in PDF, you can interact with the rest of the DTP world. PCL is an orphan format, the utilities to use it are few and mostly expensive. Though it allowed some useful things I did long ago to customise an accounting program output, I would never choose to use it for DTP. Do you perhaps have some PCL graphics you have to use? PCL bitmap fonts (which is all I think VP2/3 can use) can be easily replaced by higher quality Type 1 outline fonts when using the PS driver. |
#4
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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:15:48 -0700, "
wrote: PCL is an orphan format, the utilities to use it are few and mostly expensive. So why did my Samsung 2150 come with PCL? It also came with PS3, which is what I normally use. |
#5
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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
On Oct 17, 12:58 pm, Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:15:48 -0700, " wrote: PCL is an orphan format, the utilities to use it are few and mostly expensive. So why did my Samsung 2150 come with PCL? It also came with PS3, which is what I normally use. The question relates to Ventura, and DTP, not office printing, where PCL is better than being stuck with a proprietary printer language that means you have to throw away your printer when you upgrade your OS, I'm sure it's very efficient. I might use PCL if I was outputting a lot of bitmaps, PostScript images are rather bloated and so take larger files and longer times But not in DTP. Adobe won that battle 15 years ago. There are uncountable utilities for manipulating PostScript and PDF, but barely a handful for PCL. |
#6
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Ventura Publisher 2.0 printer driver for modern PCL printer
On Oct 16, 7:15 pm, "
wrote: Jonathan Berry wrote: asking about a new printer which would allow me to print out the PCL printer files produced by DOS-based Xerox Ventura Publisher 2.0. I sent you an email, perhaps it looked like spam. I do have a spam filter. If you sent the email less than a week ago, I can recover filtered mail from the archive. Otherwise, it is gone. Anyway, I'm curious as to why you want to use PCL. Ventura GEM has a PostScript driver and prints to a PS printer (including your HP 2605dn) or file, and that can be distilled to PDF -- I do this all the time. Once in PDF, you can interact with the rest of the DTP world. I'm beginning to see that more clearly. The big selling point of PCLReader is that it can convert PCL documents into PDF. The free version puts watermarks on pages 11-infinity. For $10 a month you can get unlimited conversion of documents to PDF online at Adobe, but PCL is *not* one of the supported source formats. PCL is an orphan format, the utilities to use it are few and mostly expensive. Though it allowed some useful things I did long ago to customise an accounting program output, I would never choose to use it for DTP. Do you perhaps have some PCL graphics you have to use? PCL bitmap fonts (which is all I think VP2/3 can use) can be easily replaced by higher quality Type 1 outline fonts when using the PS driver. That's exactly it. A raster chess font which I designed / coded / whatever you want to call it. I don't accept that outline fonts are necessarily "higher quality" because with raster fonts you can specify where every dot goes. Total control. Anyway, I'd be happy to convert my raster chess font to PS, but don't have the foggiest idea about how to go about it. Then I guess the smaller problem is obtaining serif and sans PS fonts similar to the raster fonts. I do have the Postscript printer driver set up in VP2 pro, but with no fonts... I wonder if the VP PS driver can be made to recognize or exploit in some way the PS fonts built in to the HP Color LaserJet 2605dn. It's definitely a retro thrill to be working in Xerox Ventura Publisher 2 again. Thanks for your help! -- Jonathan Berry |
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