{"id":293,"date":"2020-08-18T19:23:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T20:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2020-08-22T19:26:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-22T20:26:18","slug":"this-is-the-page-title-toplevel-128","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=293","title":{"rendered":"Printers"},"content":{"rendered":"\nPrinters<\/title>\n<p>\nAlthough more and more companies are trying to transform into a\n“paperless office,” you will undoubtedly see a printer somewhere. Even\nif the office is paperless internally, it will have to use paper of some kind to\ncommunicate with the rest of the world.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nPrinters come in many different\nshapes, sizes, formats, means of connection to the system, ways of printing\ncharacters, speeds, and so on. The two most common ways to connect printers are\nby serial port or parallel port. Linux also supports Hewlett-Packard Laser Jet\nprinters equipped with JetDirect cards. These cards allow the printer to be\nattached directly to a <glossary>network<\/glossary>,\n thereby increasing its speed. I’ll talk more\nabout these later. In addition, although they are not supported by Linux as of\nthis writing, <glossary>SCSI<\/glossary>\nprinters have appeared on the market.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIn previous\nsections, we talked about serial and parallel connections, so I don’t need to go\ninto detail about them. I do talk about these connections in more detail in the\nsecond part of the book, however, when I talk about installing and configuring\nprinters.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThere are two kinds of printers that, although were once very\ncommon, are now making way for more advanced successors: the daisy-wheel and\nchain printers. The distinction these printers had is that they had preformed\ncharacters.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIn the case of a daisy-wheel printer, printing was\naccomplished by means of a wheel, where the characters were at the end of thin\n“leaves,” which made the daisy shape. The wheel rotated very fast and\nas the appropriate letter came into position, it was struck with a hammer that\nforced the leaf with the character on it against the ink ribbon, which then\nstruck the paper. This mechanism uses the same principle as a normal typewriter.\nIn fact, there are typewriters that use the same daisy-wheel\nprinciple.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nChain printers also have preformed letters. Instead of a wheel,\nhowever, the letters are on a long strip called a chain. Instead of rotating,\nthe chain moves back and forth to bring the appropriate letter into position.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAlthough these printers are fairly quick, they are limited in what they\ncan print. You could get pretty tricky in which characters you use, and come up\nwith some rather cute pictures. However, these mechanisms aren’t able to do\nanything very detailed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe next step in printers was the impact\ndot-matrix printer. These, too, had hammers, but rather than striking preformed\nletters, the hammers themselves struck the ink ribbon. Instead of a single\nhammer, there was a column of usually 9 or 24 hammers, or pins. Such printers\nare called 9-pin or 24-pin printers.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs the printer prints, the heads\nmove across the page and print out columns of dots. Depending on what character\nis to be printed, some of the pins do not strike the ink ribbon. For example,\nwhen a dash is printed, only the middle pin(s) strike the ribbon. When printing\na more complex character like an ampersand (&), the pins strike at different\ntimes as the print head moves across the page.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs with monitors, the more\ndots you have, the sharper the image. Therefore, a 24-pin printer can produce a\nsharper image than one with only 9 pins. In most cases, the type of printer used\nis obvious the moment you see something printed with a 9-pin printer. Some\n24-pin printers require a closer look before you can tell.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNext, printers\nbegan to get rid of the ink ribbon and replace the pins with little sprayers\nconnected to a supply of ink. Instead of striking something, these sprayers\nsquirt a little dot of ink onto the paper. The result, similar to that of an\nimpact dot-matrix printer, is what an ink jet printer does.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nInk jet\nprinters have two advantages over impact dot-matrix printers. First is the issue\nof noise. Because no pins are striking the ink ribbon, the ink jet printer is\nmuch quieter. Second, by extending the technology a little, the manufacturer\nincreased the number of jets in each row. Also, instead of just squirting out\nblack ink, you could squirt out colored ink, which is how many color printers\nwork.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe drawback is the nature of the print process itself. Little\nsprayers squirting ink all over the place is messy. Without regular maintenance,\nink jets can clog up.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nUsing a principle very similar to video systems,\nlaser printers can obtain very high resolution. A laser inside the printer\n(hence the name) scans across a rotating drum that has been given a\nstatic-electric charge. When the laser hits a spot on the drum, that area looses\nits charge. Toner then spreads across the drum and sticks to those areas that\nretain the charge. Next, the drum rolls the paper across, smashing the toner\nonto the paper. Finally, the toner is fused into the paper by means of a heating\nelement.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAlthough laser printers may appear to print a solid image, they\nstill work with dots. The dots are substantially smaller than those of a 24-pin\ndot matrix, but they are still dots. As with video systems, the more dots, the\nsharper the image. Because a laser is used to change the characteristics of the\ndrum, the areas effected are very small. Therefore, with laser printers, you can\nget resolutions of even 300dpi on even the least expensive printers. Newer\nprinters are approaching 1,200dpi, which is comparable to photographs.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSome laser printers, like HP’s LaserJet, use a technology called\nresolution enhancement. Although there are still a limited number of\ndots-per-inch, the size of each dot can be altered, thereby changing the\n<em>apparent <\/em>resolution.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nKeep in mind that printers have the same\nproblem with resolution as do video systems. The more dots desired, the more\nmemory is needed to process them. An 8 1\/2″ x 11″ page with a resolution of\n300dpi takes almost a <glossary>megabyte<\/glossary>\nof memory to print.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWith printers such as\ndaisy-wheel and chain printers, you really don’t have this issue. Even a buffer\nas small as 8K is more than sufficient to hold a whole page of text,\n including\n<i>control characters<\/i> that can change the way the other characters appear.\nWhile such control characters may cause the text,\nto be printed bold or\nunderlined, they are relatively simple in nature. For example, underlining\nnormally consists of printing the character, backing up one space, then printing\nan underline.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMultiple-character sets (fonts) are something that this\nkind of printer just can’t handle. Different character sets (e.g., German) or\nchanging the characters form (e.g., italic) can easily be accomplished when the\nletter is created “on-the-fly” with dot-matrix printers. All that is\nneeded is to change the way the dots are positioned, which is usually\naccomplished by using <i>escape sequences<\/i>. First, an <i>escape<\/i>\n<i>character <\/i>(ASCII 27) is sent to the printer to tell it that the next\ncharacter (or characters) is a command to change its behavior.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nDifferent\nprinters react differently to different <glossary>escape sequences<\/glossary>.\n Although there is a\nwide range of sets of <glossary>escape sequences<\/glossary>,\n the two most common sets are those for\nIBM Proprinters and Epson printers. Most dot-matrix printers can be configured\nto behave like one of these. Some, like my (very) old Panasonic KX-P1123, can be\nconfigured to behave like <i><em>either<\/em> <\/i>one.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe shortcoming with this is\nthat you are limited to a small range of character types and sizes. Some\nprinters, like mine, can get around this limitation because they can print in\ngraphics modes as well. By viewing the page as a one complete image composed of\nthousands of dots, they can get any font, any size, with any\n<glossary>attribute<\/glossary> (assuming the software can handle this). This is\nhow printers like mine can print charts, tables, and, to some extent, pictures.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nViewing the page as a complete\nimage works when you have graphics or diagrams, but it’s a waste of memory when\nyou’re dealing with straight text. Therefore, most laser printers operate in\n<i>character-mapped mode<\/i>, in which the characters are stored in memory and\nare the dots are generated as the page goes through the printer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nPrinters\nare controlled by other means than just <glossary>escape sequences<\/glossary>\nof treating the page as\na single image. One most widely used means of control is Adobe Systems\nPostscript page description language, which is as much a language as the\nprogramming languages C or Pascal, with syntax and vocabulary. To use it, both\nthe software and the printer have to support it. However, the advantage is that\nmany applications allow you to print Postscript to a file. That file can then be\ntransferred to a remote site with a Postscript printer. The file is then sent to\na printer (as raw data) and the output is the same as though it were printed\ndirectly from the <glossary>application<\/glossary>.\n The nice thing is that the remote site does not\neven have to have the same <glossary>application<\/glossary>\nas long as its printer is\nPostscript-capable.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSelecting the best printer is more than just choosing the one with the\nhighest resolution and fastest print speed. Although these are two of the most\ncommonly quoted characteristics, they do not represent everything you need to\nconsider.\n<p>\nOne commonly overlooked thing is administration. Most business are at a\nsingle site, with a handful of people. Even if everyone had their own\nprinters, walking a few feet to figure out what’s wrong or make changes is no\nbig deal. However, if you are dealing with dozens or even hundreds of printers,\nspread out all over the world, physically going to the printer is not always\npractical.\n<p>\nIn many cases the only solution is to physically be at the printer, such as\nadding paper or changing the toner. You hope that the people on site are\ncapable of doing that much However, there are a number of problems and\nconfiguration issues that most users are notable to handle. Since calling in a\nservice technician for mundane issue might be too expensive, it would be able to\ndo some kind of administration remotely.\n<p>\nThere are many printers on the market available that have built-in\n<glossary>network<\/glossary> cards and others can be connected to printer\nservers to allow you to do certain administrative functions across the network.\nYou simply use telnet to connect to a specific port where you get a\n<glossary>command line<\/glossary> interface to the configuration options.\nAlthough you can generally do all of the configuration across the network that\nyou can do locally, you still have the command line interface, which is typically\nnot all that easy to use.\n<p>\nIf you can build a telnet server into the printer (or print server), why\ncan’t you build in an HTTPD server. Well that’s is what Brother did with a\nnumber of their printers. Using any standard browser which supports, JavaScript\nyou can administer any of the Brother internal or external print servers.\n<p>\nTheir an external print servers are just like many others on the market in\nthat you can most any printer to it. It has both twisted-pair and thin-wire\nconnectors, which allows them to be placed in most any\n<glossary>network<\/glossary>. In addition, the NC-2100h supports either 10 or\n100Mbit <glossary>Ethernet<\/glossary>, making it perfect for high use printers.\n<p>\nThe internal print server is basically an Ethernet\ncard built into the printer, with the same connectors as the external version.\nThis are essentially the same products with slightly different constructions,\nwhich means the administration is identical. As with the external printer, the\nEthernet connector is auto-sensing. In addition, both support a large list of\nnetwork protocols, including:\n<p>\nlpr\/lpd\n<br \/>HTTP\n<br \/>BOOTP\n<br \/>WINS, DHCP\n<br \/>TELNET (with user-definable ports)\n<br \/>SNMP(incl. proprietary MIB)\n<br \/>SMTP, POP3\n<br \/>IPX\/SPX (NDS and Bindery)\n<br \/>EtherTalk\n<br \/>DLC\/LLC\n<br \/>NetBEUI\n<br \/>NetBIOS support (TCP\/IP and NetBEUI)\n<br \/>Banyan Vines\n<br \/>DEC LAT\n<p>\nOne of the most interesting things for me was the inclusion of DHCP. I used\n<glossary>network<\/glossary> printers from other companies before, which only\nsupported BOOTP. This meant that we either had to configure our\n<glossary>UNIX<\/glossary> machines to support BOOTP, just for these printers, or\nconfigure them by hand. With DHCP, you can configure all of your nodes using\njust a single <glossary>protocol<\/glossary>.\n<p>\nHowever, if you look at the list, the Brother print servers are not just\nlimited to specific protocols. Basically, all of the most common protocols are\nsupported, allowing the Brother printers to fit into any\n<glossary>network<\/glossary> <glossary>environment<\/glossary>. In addition, the\nWeb configuration interface allows you to switch between Printer Control\nLanguage (PCL) and PostScript.\n<p>\nNear top end of the scale is the Brother HL 1660N, which is designed for very\ndemanding businesses. It can provide resolutions as high as 1200×600 dpi, in\n256 shades of gray. Although it has a default of only 4Mb of\n<glossary>RAM<\/glossary> it can be expanded to 66Mb using industry standard\nSIMMs. This is an important issue, because some hardware manufacturers require\nyou to buy your memory upgrades directly from them, although they are the same\nas what you buy from other places. The result is that you can pay as much as ten\ntimes the streets price just to have the hardware vendors name on it. I realize\nthat many companies make most of their money through after sales service, but\nthis is ridiculous and unnecessary.\n<p>\nThe HL-1660N is\nready to work amazingly fast. Many printers can take several minutes to warm up,\neven if just in standby mode. However, the HL-1660N is usually up in about a\nminute, meaning basically no waiting when you walk from your desk to the\nprinter. Keep in mind that if 10 people a day have to wait an average of three\nminutes for the printer to warm up, that’s 2.5 hours a week or over 500 hours a\nyear!\n<p>\nThe speed of printing is also another factor in determining how much\ntime your printer can save. Depending on the amount of text,\nresolution and other factors, the HL-1660N can get up to 17 pages a minute or\njust under 4 seconds per page.\n<p>\nThe HL-1660N can also help you save paper. When you print,\nyou can tell the printer driver to print in “draft” mode which decreases the\nresolution. This is useful for seeing exactly how the print out will look or in\ncases when high quality is not necessary. In addition, it supports 2-in-1 and\n4-in-1 printing so you can get multiple pages of your document on a single piece\nof paper.\n<p>\nFor business with less demanding requirement and even for home\nusers, Brother also produces a number of printer with slightly less speed and\nthroughput. For example, the HL-1040 has a resolution of 600 dpi, but only gets\nabout 10 pages per minute. It also includes an internal processor and supports\nBrothers data compression, thereby increasing <glossary>throughput<\/glossary>.\n<p>\nBrother also\nproduces several color laser printers. The HL-2400C has a resolution of\n300x300dpi in color mode and 1200x600dpi mono, with a <glossary>throughput<\/glossary>\nof 4 and 16 pages per minute, respectively. Once again, <glossary>throughput<\/glossary>\nis enhanced with an internal processor, this time with a SPARClite and a default of 32Mb\n<glossary>RAM<\/glossary>. The\nHL-2400CN is <glossary>network<\/glossary>\nready and supports all of the features discussed early\nincluding <glossary>SMTP<\/glossary>\nand POP3 allowing your to automatically print out incoming mail.\n<p>\nIf you work with people like some that I do, then you will appreciate the additional\nsecurity features. The HL-2400C and the HL-2400CN both allow you to block access\nto the printer based on <glossary>IP<\/glossary>\n<glossary>address<\/glossary>.\n Therefore, you won’t have certain users\nblocking the printer by outputting all of those images they downloaded from the\nInternet.\n<p>\nOne group of users whose printer needs are often forgotten as\nthose that are always on the road (out of sight, out of mind.) If they are\nvisiting a customer site, for example, it is either embarrassing or cumbersome\nto get the customer to make a print out for them. Therefore, it would be nice to\nhave a portable printer. Many vendors provide solutions which require cumbersome\nparallel cables and the inconvenience of a bulky power-supply.\n<p>\nBrother’s\nanswer to this is the MC-21P series of “mobile” ink jet color printers.\nConnectivity to the printer for both data and power is provided by a PCMCIA\ncard. Although it can only get about 2.5 pages per minute, the convenience far\noutweighs the delay in getting your print out. In addition, the MC-21P can print\non transparencies, as well as plain paper, which helps you make last minute\nchanges to your presentations, reports and so forth.\n<p>\nFrom a business\nperspective it is important to look at having a single company satisfy all of\nyour printing needs. The larger your company the greater the need is. With a\nhand full of printers, the need is not as great. However, I can speak from\nexperience when I say how hard it can be to manage a large number of different\nkinds of printers.\n<p>\nKeep in mind that you not only need to deal with different\ndrivers, but with different quality of printouts and different\nmaterials (i.e. toner cartridges). In addition, there is the issue of support.\nYou need to keep track of different warranty information, different support\nnumbers, as well as different problems. If you have discovered how to solve one\nspecific problem on one printer, you will end up having to call to another\nvendor when the problem arises on a different printer.\n<p>\nOne thing Brother\nprinters and other devices emphasize is straight-through printing. This can make\nthem slightly larger than similar devices from other vendors. However, I get\nannoyed when my pages come out with a slight curve to them.\n<p>\nBrother also\nprovides multi-function printers, which are slightly different than their\nmulti-function centers. As with the multi-function centers, these provide\nprinter, scanner and copier functionality, but no fax or other communication.\nThe MFC-P2000, for example, is a laser printer, which gets up to 10 pages per\nminutes with a resolution of 600×600, which is perfect for the small or home\noffice. It can scan at the same resolution and comes with a copy of the Xerox\nTextBridge OCR soft. So, what do you get when you combine the functionality of a\nscanner with that of a printer? A copier, which is the third function the\nMFC-P2000 provides. It, too, has a built-in processors and warms up in under a\nminute.\n<p>\nKeep in mind this is not all that Brother has to offer. I barely\ntouch on what printers and multi-function device are available. If I hadn’t I\nwould have needed an entire book. To find the exact printer to suit your needs,\ncheck out the brother web site (www.brother.com)\n<p>\nThere are also a number of\nink jet printers that brother produces. At the high end of the scale is the\nHS-5300. This gives you a resolution of 600×600, with a quality that is\nextremely close to a laser printer. It too comes with a built-in processor and\ndefault 24 <glossary>Mb<\/glossary>\n<glossary>RAM<\/glossary>,\n but can be increased up to 72Mb. As an upgrade option, you\ncan get it with the NC-2010H <glossary>network<\/glossary>\ncard, which then gives it the same\nfunctionality as any of the other Brother <glossary>network<\/glossary>\ncapable printers.\n<p>\nIt too,\nhas the built in compressor of the driver, which helps increase speed across\nthe <glossary>network<\/glossary>.\n In addition, the ink cartridges are replaced through a panel in the\nfront of the printer. No need to open up the cover and deal with the cartridge\nattached to the print head.\n<p>\nOne important aspect that I often see overlooked\nwith printers is the total cost of ownership. Some companies will consider it\nfor their computers, but often overlook it for their printers. The reason is\noften that many people are not aware of what aspects can increase the total cost\nof owning a printer. One important aspect is the expendable materials that have\nto be replenished at regular intervals or the parts that can wear out and need\nto be replaced.\n<p>\nLet’s take a laser printer as an example. As you print, you\nuse toner and eventually you will need to replace the toner cartridge. Normally,\nthere is at least one cartridge provided by the vendor when you first purchase\nthe printer. Therefore, you may not be aware of how much a new toner cartridge costs. In\nmany cases, it can be anywhere from $50 to $100, or more. The more often you have\nto change the toner cartridge the more you pay in total for the toner and the\nmore the total cost of ownership.\n<p>\nLet’s take two theoretical printers. One\ncosts $300 and the other $500. Assume that both have the exact same quality and speed,\nand each can print 10,000 pages before the toner needs to be replaced. You might\nthink that $300 printer is less expensive. Let’s assume that the toner cartridge\nfor the $300 printer costs $70, but the one for the $500 printer costs only $50.\nIt has either 10 or\n100Mbit <glossary>Ethernet<\/glossary> interface, making it reasonable to expect the printer to\nlast 3 years and in that time, you also expect to print over 200,000 copies.\nThis means, you will need to buy twenty new cartridges. With a price difference\nof $20, that means you will pay $400 extra for the toner cartridges for the less\nexpensive printer. Therefore, the more expensive printer actually comes out\ncheaper.\n<p>\nUnfortunately, the calculations\nare not always as easy as that. Often the total number of pages you can print\nwith a single cartridge will differ from printer to printer. Therefore, you need\nto first make an estimate of how many pages you will print during the expected\nlifetime of the printer and then calculate how many cartridges your will need.\nIn addition, you need to find out how long parts like the drum will last before\nit needs to be replaced. This also adds to the total cost. When you have done\nyour calculations, the best choice is the printer that has the lowest cost per\npage.\n<p>\nThis is one place where I often seen people complain about Brother\nprinters. If you are using your printer at home with just a couple of dozen\npages per month, then perhaps many of the Brother printers are not for you.\nHowever, once you start getting toward hundreds or thousands of pages per month,\nthis is where Brother printers become extremely attractive. In some cases,\nBrother printer can be as little as half as much per page.\n<p>\nAnother problem I\noften see is buying generic toner or ink. As with other products, generic or\nless known printer supplies are often cheaper than their brand-name counter\nparts. I intentionally used the word “cheaper” here, as such products often take\non the other meaning of “cheap.” For example, I have found many vendors who sell\nink for ink-jet printers that has a lot higher water content than the ink from\nthe printer vendor. It doesn’t dry as quickly and therefore produces a less than\nacceptable printout. (Maybe it’s okay for a draft, but nothing you would want to\nsend to a customer.)\n<p>\nHowever, this is not always the case and it often depend\non the paper. Therefore, you might want to test a single cartridge and package\nof paper before you buy them in bulk.\n<p>\nWith color printers another place to\nsave money is if it is a color printer and there are separate cartridges for\neach color. If your company logo has red letter on a yellow background, then you\nmight end up using more yellow and magenta. The cyan cartridge could be almost\nfull, but you end up having to through the ink away if there are separate\ncartridges.\n<p>\nYou should also look into refills for the ink cartridges. This\nusually allows you to refill a specific color, without having to replace the\nentire cartridge. However, this can be a messy job if you are not familiar with\nit. In addition, how easy it is to use the refills will be different from vendor\nto vendor. If you only do refills a few times a year, the savings compared to\nbuying completely new cartridges may not be worth the hassle.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Printers Although more and more companies are trying to transform into a “paperless office,” you will undoubtedly see a printer somewhere. Even if the office is paperless internally, it will have to use paper of some kind to communicate with … <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=293\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-293","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/293\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}