Dot matrix multipart form printing?

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Hi folks,

I am a LedgerSMB novice that has put himself in need of assistance. I've been 
lurking on the list reading messages and looked through the archives at 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=ledger-smb-users for 
any information on this. I have not seen the answer I need so far. I need to 
move fast on this so if any of you have even a partial answer, can point me 
to a FAQ with the answers and/or to a manual page or three please reply.

I have a potential LSMB user that needs to print on three part, plain, 
pin-feed form paper for many of their Point of Sale transactions that deal 
with credit accounts for state schools. Their current PoS system (Advantage 
Accounting PoS, http://www.rtsco.com/) does this using fast, plain text print 
jobs to 'lp' based printers on an SCO OpenServer system (in this case one at 
lpt0 the other on a multi-port serial board port). Since SCO appears to be 
imploding and their current server hardware is "dying" I have talked these 
folk into trying LSMB on Linux but they have to have this multipart form 
printing capability.

I asked for an explanation of why they have to have multipart forms. Here is 
what they have to do to satisfy the state school system's accounting 
department and be "allowed" to sell to state schools. The Point of Sale 
printout must be on 8.5"x11" multipart paper as required by the state. The 
teachers buying supplies against these credit accounts are required to sign 
the multipart printout and keep one copy to deliver to their school office. 
Another copy stays at the store and then is delivered at the end of each 
month to the school's overseeing local school board with the bill to be paid. 
The original part stays at the Point of Sale location for them to present in 
case of a state audit of a school's purchases. They have to keep this 
original for at least three years. Isn't bureaucratic nonsense just peachy?

I know I can set up an Epson impact printer with ESC/P2 capability to print 
correctly using one of the CUPS Epson inkjet drivers. I have an Epson LQ-570+ 
here that I use on rare occasions which prints raster type jobs well using 
the "Stylus 800 Foomatic/stcolor" driver. It will also print plain text jobs 
if I bypass the CUPS driver and send the print request directly to the 
parallel port with embedded printer control codes. There are three questions 
I need answered:

1.  Will an impact printer work well with printing from LSMB?

2.  Is anyone successfully using an impact printer with LSMB in a Point of 
Sale situation?

3.  Is it possible to have fast, plain text print jobs from LSMB or do all 
print jobs have to go through the slower raster type printing with Latex -> 
postscript?

Thank all of you in advance for any information.

Gene Alexander
-- 
ERA Computers & Consulting <http://www.eracc.com>
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