[Tfug] postscript & ghostscript printing issue

[christ]

Hi, can someone advise me on how to troubleshoot a
printing issue.

The gist of it is that in an effort to work around
a system crash when I try to use cups, I decided to
try to set up printing the old-fashioned way on my
FreeBSD system. In the freebsd handbook, this
involves getting your printer to first print raw
text files, and then creating filters to print 
everything else.

The printer is an Hp LaserJet 4L parallel printer
and by way of a very simple filter I've eliminated
the stair step effect when printing raw text files.

So the raw text files work, and now it's time to
configure my printer to print everything else. 
I thought I'd start with PostScript files.

By using GhostScript:
gs -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sOutputFile=%pipe%lpr ~/toPrint/output.ps

I can get my printer to print an AbiWord document
that was printed to the PostScript file output.ps.
The problem is that it doesn't print it correctly.

Instead of printing the document the way I had created
it, it prints out really big, and actually runs off the
page.

Thinking this might have to do with paper size, I
tried to troubleshoot this by running ps2pdf and
looking at the properties of the resulting pdf
document, which showed the document to be 8.5x11.

So now I don't know what else to look at. I also
thought it might have to do with page orientation,
but that wouldn't explain the fact that the fonts
print bigger.

Any way, I feel like I'm really close, and would
love to be able to say that I managed to do this,
so any help/guidance will really be appreciated
and will let me hold on to my 4 pages/minute laser
printer for a little longer ^_^

Chris


-- 
christ <skeptikos at gmail.com>