[OT] Linux Printers

[Shane Hathaway]

Justin Gedge wrote:
> couple years ago- I bought the next generation in that line for home.
> HP2300.  It appears that HP has assimilated [or emulates] PostScript as part
> of their newer PCL [Printer Control Language].  I first saw this on one of
> the really cheap low end [hp1300] printers.  You could feed in raw PS code
> and it knew what to do.

In concrete terms: I discovered not long ago that if you open port 9100
of an ordinary networked HP laser printer and feed a raw postscript file
to it, it will actually print without complaint.  In other words:

nc 10.x.x.x 9100 < file.ps

Thus netcat doubles as a printer driver.  Really cool.

Shane