scalable print software?

[techknight]

Well when I moved, the one thing I forgot and left behind was my laser printer. 

I did up some USPS labels, and well, the only printer I have on hand is my Imagewriter II. So for shits and giggles, I saved the USPS labels as GIFs, and brought them over to my quadra. 

But, if I try and use Netscape to print, its way too large/off the page. And if I use JPEGview, it scales it down but its too small and no way to set the scale size for printing. 

So that brings up the question. Is scalable/fit 100% to page a feature we have taken for granted with time? Or is there some sort of image printing software that will scale to fit print? 

any ideas? 

 

[rsolberg]

Photoshop does.  As for something lighter, perhaps GraphicConverter?  You could also try saving the graphic as a PDF and then use Acrobat Reader to print at actual size/100%

 

[techknight]

Well the labels are already in PDF format from the USPS site. BUT... of course its going to be the newest/latest/greatest PDF format there is, which will likely not open in Acrobat 3. 

However, that leads me into another tangent: I took a splurge and picked up a modern"ish" laser printer cheap on ebay. Laserjet 1012.

It is USB only so no network, or anything. I can attach it directly to my PC.

That brings up the question: Is it possible to printer modern printers from vintage macintosh machines? Just curious. I am sure I would have to share the

printer as a windows share, but from that point forward, I dont know.

any ideas?

 

[rsolberg]

This might be useful: http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c00041547

Also, if you have a Mac OS X system that opens the USPS PDFs nicely, you can use Preview.app to export them as a more compatible form of PDF.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Yes, you can print to modern printers, but it isn't easy with classic MacOS unless you have it connected via Appletalk, and the printer supports Postscript. The easiest way to do it is to find a copy of PCMaclan for a Windows machines to share the printer via Appletalk (or use Linux and netatalk) and then create a "virtual" Postscript printer using Ghostscript and RedMon (Linux can use CUPS for this).

 

[Gorgonops]

One thing that's sometimes useful in edge cases, like if you already have a Linux/UNIX print server that can do Postscript translation and exposes the traditional "LPR" print server port (or a networked postscript printer that has LPR support built in, a lot of older print servers can do it, but doesn't do Appletalk) is the "Desktop printer queue" support that was included with later versions of the Apple Laserwriter driver. Here's some instructions on how to use it:

http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/clprprintersetup.html

The main limitation is that it only works with Mac OS versions 7.5 and up. It can save you the hassle of getting Netatalk to work, and there are also recipes out there for setting up LPR/LPD shares with postscript translation on Windows boxes. (I've done it myself.. a long, long time ago. Windows 95-ago.)

(Also note, of course, that OS X can print to LPR/LPD ports. In that case you don't necessarily have to set up postscript translation, you just need to use the right GIMPprint driver.)

 

[techknight]

Sounds complicated.... That pretty much blew right over my head. haha. 

I may know alot of stuff, but Printers are the one thing I know almost nil about. Sure, I can fix the electronics but thats about it.