David Erdman wrote:

Hi. I have an NEC 860 laser printer (installed in apsfilter as an hp lpplus), though not great...is working at 300 dpi with linux. the printer seems to work with say for instance..printing with netscape, or staroffice. but when printing with lpr, everything prints sideways. could someone help with this? Is there a configuration i need to add to apsfilter, or a command line option i didnt see in the man page.

I'm responding very generally, and from memory, from conversations I had with NEC tech support before deciding to NOT buy the 860. I apologize if any innacuracies creep into this reply: The NEC 860 (and in fact, more printers than you can count) rely on drivers added to Microsoft Win/NT/9x to give it much of it's functionality. It's at least functional (many HP printers are not). But the version of PCL in its firmware is not the most recent. It only offers 300 dpi. And doesn't include too many fonts either, although that's usually not a problem; if you need fonts you're generally using a driver that knows how to download them. The reason your printer is printing in landscape mode is most likely because that's its power-on default. Why? I have no idea. Can it be changed? Likewise no idea. Ask NEC tech support. Alternatively, get a copy of the codes for PCL (someone with an old HP printer may have this for you; I know that you can get it via faxback from HP but I can't find the document number at this time) and create a file with those codes in it; then either append it to the beginning of each file you send via lpr, or just send it separately before sending any other files. Years ago I wrote (for the first HP Laserjet) a small (CP/M) program called HPRINT which allowed you to specify what you wanted on a command line; I did rewrite it for DOS, but I don't have it now. I suppose I could write something again if there's enough interest. It worked something like this:

hprint cp

would put your printer into compressed portrait mode. I hope this helps; I'm an old-timer with computers, having started in the 60s, and with Linux, having run a webhosting company with kernel v0.99, but I'm an absolute newbie with SuSE; I've just bought SuSE 6.1 while waiting for a Red Hat 6.0 that I'd ordered to arrive directly from Red Hat. Red Hat 6.0 costs us$79; SuSE 6.1 was us$29 (at Fry's, in So. Calif.); at the price, I think SuSE is a much better buy, and comes with a lot more software. I'll try it this week. Jeff -- Jeff Lasman <jl-lists@jatek.net>, Internet Products Manager, Jatek Corp. Main office: Tel: (310) 375-7646 Fax: (310) 375-0892 Internet Products: Tel: (909) 787-8589 Fax: (909) 782-0205 24hr Internet Products Support: Tel: (909) 787-8589 Fax: (909) 782-0205 -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>