Rony Bill wrote:

Dear Friends,

Has anyone from the group actually used the Epson LX-300 dot matrix printer on Linux, with good print quality in Open Office, Evoluion and other software? If so which is that Linux version?

I hope you have read my previous mail. Printing capabilities does not depend on the any specific Linux version. I have listed out the programs that you need to have a proper printing solution. These softwares (apart from "apsfilter") are normally included in most of the distros.

After finally managing to get a printout in Open Office, I am again stuck in Evolution. It does not print. It not only throws out the paper but the empty roller keeps rolling for some time and I am scared it may cause overload to the motors or control circuit. Both these programs are too good but its a pity they can't print decently.

In my previous mail I have specifically mentioned that I am using LX-300 printer for my office work. If you want I can fax you printouts from any software that you want to test with. Give me your fax number and tell me from which program you want a printout.

Still better, you can install the programs I had mentioned in my mail and then setup apsfilter to give you good output. Select 240x204 for resolution and esp9mid as your printer driver. I think it would be quite easy for you to set it up.

I even downloaded OO 1.1.3 from the net but it still does not improve print quality, which is terrible. LX 300 is a very common SOHO printer.

There is nothing wrong with OO or evolution. I am using OO ver 1.1.2 and everything is fine. In fact, I have not even touched any printing settings in OO. The default option "Generic Printer" is just fine. This is because most of the programs under Linux expect to find a printer daemon running and/or more often then not the command "lpr". Once a postscript file is send to the printer, aps-filter takes over and checks if it is only text file or otherwise. Text files are directly send to the printer without any modification, but postscript files are converted to proper format which the printer will understand. This is done by aps-filter with the help of ghostscript and gnu-gs-fonts. Not modifying text files is pretty useful, specially to me, because when printing invoices with FOXPRO under DOSemu, my invoice files have certain print commands to print names/headers in Double size, Bold, Underline etc. This commands should be send to the printer without modification and aps-filter does just that! People who have used Wordstar during the DOS days would be more aware about all this. No offence intended but I surely do miss Wordstar, I mean there is nothing similar to that type of software under GNU/Linux. Of course there is Tex/Latex, but it requires a bit of learning curve, or maybe I haven't put in enough effort to learn it. Being self employed I have a business to look after and that does not leave me enough time to learn new things.

Anyway, I hope you will be able to resolve your problem soon. And do give me your Fax number so I can show you what type of printouts I get with my Epson LX-300 printer.

Regards, Rajen.