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From: tony@SDD.HP.COM (Tony Parkhurst)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Re: Counting pages on a HPLJ II
Message-ID: <9104231655.AA11019@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>
Date: 19 Apr 91 23:06:57 GMT
References: <9104171649.AA25809@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>
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In article <9104171649.AA25809@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>, matt@EECS.NWU.EDU (Matt Larson) writes:
|> I am interested in writing a filter that can count the number of pages
|> printed to an HPLJ II.  The input stream could be plain text or the HP
|> graphics language.  Counting pages of text is easy; counting pages of
|> graphics (for example, output from Ghostscript, gnuplot, dvijep, etc.)
|> is the part that has me stumped.


What's this worth to you?  :-)

Basically, write a general purpose PCL parser (does nothing but pass
thru data).  I did this the other day, took me about an hour or two.
You need to pass thru graphics and download data so they don't get 
interpreted as something else.

Next, decide what needs to be kept track of:

	1)  FF  (formfeeds are easy).
	2)  LF  (but you have to know how many to the page, which can be
		 changed by various escape sequences).
	3)  CR  (if the line termination is changed from default)
	4)  <esc>E  (reset, finishes and ejects a page, but only if it
		     gets printed on).
	5)  CAP moves, which don't go to a new page, but may set the
	    CAP to a lower position on the page which will mean less
	    LF's to get to the next page.

Seems like it should be a fun program to write.

-- Tony