Printer Problem

[Bill Vance]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 02:27:45AM -0400, Doug wrote:
>Date: Sun, 20 May 2012 02:27:45 -0400
>From: Doug <dmcgarrett at optonline.net>
>Subject: Re: Printer Problem
>
>On 05/20/2012 01:54 AM, Waleed Hamra wrote:
>>On 05/19/2012 10:53 PM, Bill Vance wrote:
>>>Howdy folks;
>>>
>>>Ok, running 10.04 with a relatively new, "HP Officejet
>>>6500A Plus."  I'm trying to print out a huge-mongous
>>>file.  For the curious, its the, "StdLib Reference
>>>Manual", for the HLA Assembler.  The stack of paper is
>>>allready well over 4 inches tall.  I can handle it when
>>>it runs out of paper, as the printer is rather well
>>>behaved about pausing for that.  Whats getting my goat
>>>is when the cartridge starts running out of ink, its
>>>rather difficult to be right on top of it, as it very
>>>slowly fades out to finally blank pages.  I have a 1/2"
>>>stack of now useless paper left over from the last time.
>>>
>>>Ok, so here's the question.  Does kde, (or anything
>>>else for that matter), have a printer util that can
>>>cause a printer to pause in the middle of a print job,
>>>and then let you back up in the file to before things
>>>started getting flakey, and restart the print job from
>>>there?  After I've changed the ink cartridge during
>>>the pause, that is.
>>>
>>>It seems to me that swaping out ribbons and cartridges
>>>etc. would be such a common place sort of thing, that
>>>someone somewhere would have created something like
>>>that, but who/what/where?
>>>
>>not sure i know of any way, but how about pulling the paper out? that'll
>>cause it to pause. if it has a drawer, or some sort of door, most
>>printers will pause if you open them, and display a warning asking you
>>to close the door back.
>>of course, this is assuming you're beside the printer, and watching when
>>things start getting flakey.
>>
>
>It would seem that most times you would be printing from a pdf
>(or if not, you might be able to create one from whatever text you
>do have) and to print pdfs, you always have the opportunity to
>print a selected group of pages, so you could print, say 50 pages,
>look at the output, and then start at page 51, and so on to continue.
>That way you wouldn't have to baby-sit the printer, you could go and
>have lunch or something, and look at the output at your convenience.
>
>Not ideal, but better than nothing.
>
>--doug

First off, thanks to everyone who reponded.

That .pdf, "print pages(X) through pages(Y)", option is
really interesting;  I didn't know you could do that.
It's just a thought, but Will it print those pages to a
file, too?

The big problem about printing .pdf files, though,
(at least using Ocular), is that it seems to take about
4 or 5 minutes to print each page.  I doubt the ink
would last that long, but It would probably still be
spitting out paper after I came back from a three month
world tour.

So far I've been using firefox to print the html file.
Firefox seems to be able to print 4 or 5 pages per
minute, which is vastly better.

Bill