[ts-7000] Support for USB Printer - Is it really that complicated?

["Ed" <>]

Hi all,

I'm using a TS-7200 board for embedded control of a machine that uses
stepper motors, LCD display, serial comm, digital I/O, and a USB Flash
Drive.  I've learned enough about Linux to get my (fairly large)
application working and installed on 10 new machines that are ready to
be shipped to our customers.  All I need to finish the project is to
be able to send simple ASCII text from my program to a USB printer (HP
D1420).

I've searched the web and it seems that I must do a number of things
to make this happen but I'm still not clear on which of these steps
are necessary:

Install HPIJS printer driver.  I can find out how to do this under
Debian but how can I do this under TS-Linux with 8MB of on-board flash?

Do I have to rebuild the kernel to include printer support? I have not
had to modify my kernel at this point so I'm not really set up to do
that.  I've done all my app. building and debugging straight from the
CF card that TS provides in the dev. kit.  If kernel modification is
required we may have to contract someone to do it because we're under
the gun time-wise.

Do I have to convert text files to PostScript, have a .ppd file
present, and use foomatic-rip, etc. just to print simple ASCII text. 
That seems like such a convoluted process.  I was assuming (and
naively hoping) that I'd be able to just do something like the
following in my application program:

   fd = open("/dev/some_printer_driver", "w");
   write(fd, "ascii text\n");

This is a single-user system with no network support.  On power-up it
runs my app. and does nothing else.  No spooling is necessary.  My
app. can wait until a file is done printing if necessary.  I've been
able to implement USB flash drive support successfully.

Could someone please point me in the right direction?  Is this going
to be as complicated as it seems?  Any tips at all will be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks.
Ed K.



 
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