min12xxw - Convert pbmraw streams to Minolta PagePro 12xxW languages

Min12xxw was written by Manuel Tobias Schiller (mala@hinterbergen.de).

Local Utilities                                   December 2005                                      MIN12XXW(1)

Min12xxw was written without any documentation from the manufacturer.  The  description  of  the  printer
       language  may be inaccurate or even wrong because it was obtained by looking at the output of the windoof
       driver only. The code dealing with the compression of raster data is in its spirit heavily  based  on  an
       initial  driver  by  Adam  Bocim <beetman@seznam.cz> who managed to find out how things are done (thanks,
       Adam, you did a great job!).  This new version is  considerably  faster,  implemented  more  cleanly  and
       (hopefully) well documented.

       It  also  features  querying the printer status and page counter, a suggestion made by Bruno Schoedlbauer
       <bruno.schoedlbauer@gmx.de>, who also pointed me to a nice USB sniffer by Benoit Papillault  for  Windoof
       98 and up, see http://benoit.papillault.free.fr/usbsnoop.  (That little program may prove very helpful on
       similar occasions.  Happy USB sniffing...)

       David Hamilton <dhamilto@angel.homeip.net> has helped a lot in testing and developing the support for the
       PagePro 1350W.

       Even  though  this  program  has been designed with care and much thought, no-one can guarantee that this
       program will not damage your printer, computer or even your neighbour's car, because it was built without
       knowing exactly how things work, it's only a (hopefully) reasonable  guess.  (However,  my  printer  does
       still  work,  even  after  the  testing  phase when a lot of wrong stuff was sent to it. And my neighbour
       hasn't complained either...)

       Most of the available paper sizes have not actually been verified to work as advertised -  reports  about
       successes  or problems are welcome.  Also the code for querying the printer is not heavily tested. If you
       have comments to make or know more about the format than I  do,  please  share  your  thoughts  and  your
       knowledge.

       13xxW  series support seems to be relatively well tested by now. Send mail with feedback if you have such
       a printer and you experience problems.

       1400W support is pretty new - please send e-mail if it works or if you run  into  problems.  Feedback  on
       models for which support has just been completed is very important to improve and stabilise this support.

       Bugs  and  problems  reports  are generally welcome because I just don't have the time to test everything
       out. I needed a filter and here it is. If it does not work - complain ;-)

-h,--help
            Gives usage information (help)

       -v,--version
            Displays the version number and exit

       -e,--ecomode
            Enables economic mode which saves toner by leaving every other scanline  blank.  This  degrades  the
            printout's  resolution  a  little,  the effect is most easily seen (and looks particularly bad) when
            printing in 300 dpi mode.

       -s,--status
            Query the printer status, page counter and whatever information can be retrieved. The printer status
            is basically an unprocessed dump of what the printer sends, so unexpected things may happen  if  the
            printer  sends funny data because it got confused somehow... This might however still be useful. The
            page counter and other information is heavily processed and should be more reliable. Note  that  for
            queries  to be made, the printer must (of course) be switched on, with all cables connected, and not
            be busy printing (or your print job may be truncated). See the -d option below which sets the device
            file to use. This has so far only been tested on 1200W, 1350W and 1400W printers. Send  mail  if  it
            works for others as well.

       -ddev,--devicedev
            Sets the device file to use for queries. The default is /dev/lp0.

            Please note that this option is only meaningful with the "-s" or "--status" option. If you intend to
            send  a  document to the printer, you have to redirect min12xxw's standard output to the device file
            in question. See the documentation that came with your shell on how to do that.

       -n,--nomargins
            Disables the enforcement of the 0.17 inch margins on all sides of the paper. The converter  discards
            the  equivalent of this length of its input because ghostscript outputs a full page with margins. If
            you arranged in some way for the input to be marginless, or have slightly larger paper, you can give
            this option to include the full input with margins. Please note that for very small page dimensions,
            min12xxw might need to disable enforcing the page margins for all pages following the offending page
            to make the job printable. In that case, a warning message will be printed  on  the  standard  error
            stream to inform the user.

       -mmodel,--modelmodel
            Sets  which printer model to produce output for. Currently, no checks for features only available to
            specific models are made (available paper trays differ from model to model,  for  example).  Let  me
            know  if this causes problems. Available models are: 1200W, 1250W, 1300W, 1350W, 1400W. 1200W is the
            default. As an alternative, you can also symlink,  link  or  rename  your  executable  to  min1200w,
            min1250w,  min1300w,  min1350w  or  min1400w,  thus  making  the model specified in the filename the
            default model. This saves you from typing the model selection option again and  again  and  again...
            Please  note  that you must supply the model option correctly if you drive any other model than what
            is the default. If you fail to do so, your printer will not produce any output or  react  to  status
            queries from the host.

       -rresolution,--resresolution
            Sets  the  resolution to either 300, 600 or 1200 dpi (600 dpi is the default). Keep in mind that you
            need to produce your  output  accordingly.  It  is  also  possible  to  specify  the  resolution  as
            (horizontal)x(vertical)  resolution  (e.g.  -r  1200x600) where horizontal resolution may be once or
            twice the vertical resolution. The maximum resolution is 1200 dpi in both  vertical  and  horizontal
            direction.  The  minimum  vertical resolution for mixed resolution printing seems to be 600 dpi. 300
            dpi printing has only been tested on 1200W, 1350W and 1400W models. Mixed  resolution  printing  was
            seen  for  13xxW  and  1400W models only, but tests show that the 1200W is capable of handling it as
            well, so chances are that 1250W printers won't have trouble, either.

       -ttray,--traytray
            Sets the paper tray to be used. Valid values for tray are "auto",  "tray1",  "tray2"  and  "manual",
            with  "auto"  being the default. Not all printer models have all sorts of paper trays. "auto" should
            be safe on all of them, I think. In fact, the PagePro 1400W seems to have only this  kind  of  paper
            tray.

       -ptype,--papertypetype
            Sets  the  type  of  paper used. Type can be one of "normal", "thick", "transparency", "envelope" or
            "postcard". "normal" is the default.

       -ffmt,--paperformatfmt
            This sets the paper format to be used for the print job. The default value for fmt  is  "a4".  Valid
            values are given below.

       a4
         A4 paper (210 mm x 297 mm)

       b5
         B5 envelope (176 mm x 250 mm)

       a5
         A5 paper (148 mm x 210 mm)

       jpost
         Post card (100 mm x 148 mm)

       corpost
         Correspondence Postcard (148 mm x 200 mm)

       jisy6
         JIS Yokei 6-gou paper (98 mm x 190 mm)

       jisy0
         JIS Yokei 0-gou paper (120 mm x 235 mm)

       chinese16k
         Chinese 16K paper (185 mm x 260 mm)

       chinese32k
         Chinese 32K paper (130 mm x 185 mm)

       legal
         Legal paper (8.5" x 14")

       glegal
         G. Legal paper (8.5" x 13")

       letter
         Letter paper (8.5" x 11")

       gletter
         G. Letter paper (8.5" x 10.5")

       executive
         Executive paper (7.25" x 10.5")

       halfletter
         Halfletter paper (5.5" x 8.5")

       envmonarch
         Envelope Monarch (3.875" x 7.5")

       env10
         Envelope COM-10 (8.125" x 9.5")

       envdl
         Envelope DL (110 mm x 220 mm)

       envc5
         Envelope C5 (162 mm x 229 mm)

       envc6
         Envelope C6 (114 mm x 162 mm)

       envb5
         Envelope B5 (176 mm x 250 mm)

       Choukei-3Gou
         Choukei-3Gou paper (120mm x 235 mm)

       Choukei-4Gou
         Choukei-4Gou paper (90 mm x 205 mm)

       custom
         Custom paper size

       envb6
         Envelope 6 3/4 (3.625" x 6.5")

       folio
         F4/Folio paper (210 mm x 330 mm)

       jisy1
         JIS Yokei 1-gou (120 mm x 176 mm)

       jisy2
         JIS Yokei 2-gou (105 mm x 235 mm)

       quadpost
         Quad postcard (200 mm x 296 mm)

Min12xxw  is a filter which converts pbmraw streams (produced by ghostscript, for example) to the printer
       language of Minolta PagePro 1[234]xxW printers.

gs-q-dBATCH-dSAFER-dQUIET-dNOPAUSE-sPAPERSIZE=a4-r1200-sDEVICE=pbmraw-sOutputFile=--<test.ps|min12xxw-r1200>test.min
            This  would convert a postscript file test.ps to a file test.min which could be sent directly to the
            printer, a 1200W to be exact. The output is rendered at 1200 dpi. If you have to  drive  some  other
            model, see the model selection option (-m) above.

       min12xxw - Convert pbmraw streams to Minolta PagePro 12xxW languages

Min12xxw  should  run  on most *nix-like workstations without major problems. Library functions which are
       known to be missing on non-Linux systems such as getline or getopt_long may have to  be  replaced  by  an
       appropriate substitute.  In case of getline and getopt_long this has already been done. The query options
       may  or  may  not  work  on other systems, depending on the characteristics of the printer driver and the
       interface used (USB, very old style parallel port or a more recent one...).

       min12xxw [options]