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I have a network Brother HL-L2340D printer on my system (Ubuntu 14.04LTS). I can print to it, for example from gedit. All good.

The printer documentation and some experimentation suggest it is also possible to print to it by ftp-ing a file to it, but I need a file in the right format for the printer.

The CFG-PAGE.TXT retrieved (by ftp) from the printer seems to imply the printer knows several formats:

<Active services>         BRN142D27960B7A
                          BINARY_P1
                          TEXT_P1
                          POSTSCRIPT_P1
                          PCL_P1
                          BRN142D27960B7A_AT

How can I generate a file I can print, and print it, please?

This is what I have tried - where appropriate, files sent using ftp brother and put myfile:

  1. Postscript file - prints dozens of empty pages.
  2. PDF file - prints hundreds of empty pages
  3. Text file - prints nothing
  4. Change System Settings -> Printers -> my printer -> Device URI to file:///home/mark/blah.prn - reports There was an error during the CUPS operation: 'client-error-not-possible
Mark Smith
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1 Answers1

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As far as I can tell, the HL-L2340D is a GDI printer. GDI printers use the graphics system in the PC to convert the page into dots on the page. They do not understand any "printer language" (aka PDL or Page Description Language) such as PostScript or PCL5. PCL5 understands plain text, which is what you can generate with text editors, etc.

As a result, the only files your printer understands are those created by a driver. You could get the driver to print to a file, and then you can send that file to the printer using lp, but that is probably not what you have in mind.

I see that the printer has several lpr queues built in (PCL_P1, etc). However, these are not PDLs the printer understands, just queue names to be used with lpr for sending print jobs.

hdhondt
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