ImageWriter emulator

[iKarith]

Hi all, I've been contemplating ImageWriter emulation.

 

There's an IWem PostScript emulator for the ImageWriter, and supposedly it supports color, but I'm told it doesn't mix colors properly. Still, the idea I had in mind was to actually set this up with GhostScript on Linux (so, on a Raspberry Pi or something) and have it listen to a serial port. See where I'm going with that? The Apple // prints to a serial port and it thinks it's talking to a printer. It happens to actually be talking to a clever ImageWriter emulator, which of course may or may not be written in PostScript, but is probably producing PostScript or PDF output, because those are the standard ways you get stuff printed on Linux systems. These may or may not be dumped to an actual printer.

 

Has anyone ever thought of doing something like this? Now that I've suggested it, has anyone got some idea about how to go about doing it? The main problem I see is that identifying the end of the job is not trivial.

[Keatah]

End of the job detection would be simple and operate like in the old days. Press a button to form-feed the printer or advance it to where you could rip the paper out. And when you do that, the file closes and is saved.

[nicholas042893]

I know the Sweet16 emulator has ImageWriter emulation and outputs prints to a PDF file. That sounds similar to what you're talking about.

[magnusfalkirk]

Virtual II also does Imagewriter II output that can be saved as a PDF.

 

Dean

Edited July 23, 2016 by magnusfalkirk