Print PDF When Printer Does Not Support application/PDF

[nawilson]

Hi,

Many of the printers that I am trying to connect to do not have support for the document-format "application/pdf". However, they all list the following document-formats as supported: "application/vnd.hp-PCL" and "application/octet-stream".

How I can print a PDF using IPP when the printer does not support application/pdf?

I have already tried switching the document-format to one of the supported options, but it does not print the expected output. Instead it prints some gibberish, and what looks like styling code.

var ipp = require('ipp');
var PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');

//make a PDF document 
var buffers = [];
var doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.fontSize(14);
doc.text("THIS IS A TEST PRINT JOB", 10, 10);

doc.on('data', buffers.push.bind(buffers)); 
doc.on('end', function() {
  var printer = ipp.Printer("http://myprinter/ipp");
  var msg = {
    "version": 1.1,
    "operation-attributes-tag": {
      "requesting-user-name": "testuser",
      "job-name": "Test7",
      // "document-format": "application/octet-stream"
      "document-format": "application/vnd.hp-PCL"
    },
    data: new Buffer(Buffer.concat(buffers))
  };

  printer.execute("Print-Job", msg, function(err, res) {
    console.log('Err: ' + JSON.stringify(err));
    console.log('Res: ' + JSON.stringify(res));
  });
});

doc.end();

Thanks

[lukas-zech-software]

@nawilson Did you find a solution to this problem?

[williamkapke]

I use PDF as an example because it is easy to work with- you can view it on your machine AND sent it to a printer. Some older printers and ones made by stubborn manufacturers can't process PDF. In my scenario- I only buy printers that support PDF. The other document types are too hard to work with.

So, for PCL variations, you will need a library that generates the Printer Control Language (PCL) data instead of PDF data.

Alternatively, you can look at using a CUPS server to handle it. HTH

[nawilson]

@lukas-zech-software My solution was to convert the PDF documents to PCL via GhostScript and then send the PCL file to the printer.

[nathanhleung]

Setting "document-format": "application/octet-stream" worked for me. (for PDF)

[JayFang1993]

@nathanhleung could you show me your example code?

[nathanhleung]

@JayFang1993 I don't exactly remember what I was doing (this was over a year ago) but here's the repo with my code for my printer project: https://github.com/nathanhleung/print-anywhere

[lacmuch]

Use https://github.com/Atlantis-Software/pclkit instead of pdfkit

PCL format is more standard

[sun4github]

Use https://github.com/Atlantis-Software/pclkit instead of pdfkit

PCL format is more standard

If the PCL document generation can read from a PDF and generate PCL, it will be awesome. I unfortunately do not see that.