HP Deskjet 722/720C

[^chewie <chewie@wookimus.net>]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 08:43:21AM -0400, Charles Fulton wrote:
> This is not entirely true... the is one and only one HP printer that
> will not work in Linux.  It is (I believe) the Deskjet 722.  I know
> someone who got one of these with his Dell and has been messing with
> it for several years now with no luck.

He hasn't done much research then, has he?  There's a post-ghostscript
driver called pnm2ppa (old version) and pdm2ppa (newer version) that
is used to parse ghostscrip output into something the HP 722/720 can
understand.  It has been B&W for quite a while, but in the last couple
months, the developers have been able to reverse engineer the color
capabilities.  It works quite well actually.

> It seems HP had a go with the WinPrinter thing but decided against
> doing it in any great quantity (finally a sensible company)..

HP will not release the specs for the PPA protocol because they
believe it is a competitive Intellectual Technology(TM).  They're just
being dicks, IMHO, but I've little say in the matter since I purchased
one of these printers before I knew better.

If you were to take my advise about printers, find yourself an InkJet
printer that can understand Postscript files natively.  Avoid the
whold ghostscript layer completely.

-- 
  Chad "^chewie, gunnarr" Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net>
              http://wookimus.net/chewie

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