[LI] postscript info needed.

[Nikhil Datta <nikk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've set up a printer accounting system for my college using samba and a
HP LaserJet 6 MP Postscript.

The accounting system itself is simple :
The printcap is setup to use a particular perl script as an accounting
filter. The perl script reads the contents of the entire postscript print
job sent raw by the windows node, extracts the number of pages from a tag
at the end, and writes that to the accounting log.

The whole process is quite interesting, I plan to document and post the
system eventually, even though my solution seems to be printer specific, I
don't see why allowances can't be made for other languages like PCL.

The problem : as far as I understand, all applications using the same
windows driver should output nearly identical (but for app specific
formatting) postscript output for any job. For example, if I print a 6
page document from MS Word and MS Wordpad, I get the correct number of
pages (6). However, If i elect to send 6 copies of a 6 page document from
both applications, then *boom*. MS Word correctly (?) reports the number
of pages in the document as 6*6=36, however wordpad shows up only 6, with
no indication of the number of copies anywhere in the raw ps file.

Has anyone played around with this stuff, or has access to PostScript
documentation which will explain to me what's happening ? I need to be
able to correctly grab the number of pages coming through.

thanks in advance. 

nikk



Time is fluid ... like a river with currents, eddies, backwash.
		-- Spock, "The City on the Edge of Forever", stardate 3134.0

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