Plotter to bubble-jet?

[Tim Cutts]

Jarmo Uusitalo <j.uusitalo at kmf.gu.se> writes:

>I apologise if this question is answered in some FAQ etc, but...

>I would need a "translator" from plotter instructions to page 
>descriptions.


>Background:

>We have:
>1) A inkjet printer (Canon BJC-820) that uses a 
>Epson LQ 2550 Windows driver.

>2) A spectrophotometer that uses a 
>Epson FX-80 driver, i.e. a plotter driver.

Er, the FX-80 is a dot-matrix printer.  You should find the output
will print on any printer (including your canon) with Epson emulation.
You'll just get rather chunky output (the FX-80 was a 9-pin printer,
and so could only achieve, if memory serves, about 180dpi).

>The 
>spectrophotometer seems to be able to send general 
>plotter instructions. (The control program was written back 
>in 1988 and does not seem to be updated since then, Sigh!)

>Thus, in order to use the Canon printer I would need a 
>way to translate the instructions coming out from the 
>spectrophotometer control program into a page description that 
>could be understood by a bubble-jet printer driver.

As longas your canon is in epson emulation mode, it should work
without any translation.

>Is there anyone out there that 
>is aware of such a "translator"?

>If so many thanks, 
>(else we will have to return the printer (we cant return the
>spectrophotometer, we need it...)).

If your terminology above is wrong, and you do actually mean a plotter
(just not the Epson FX-80 raster type printer), then what you want is
to set the spectrophotometer to print PostScript, if at all possible.
If you can do that, and print the PostScript to a file, you can later
print it on a Macintosh or on any other printer by using the free
PostScript interpreter, GhostScript, available for Unix, MS-DOS, OS/2
and lots of other platforms.

Tim.