I have an HP plotter (HPGL) and many plot files in HPGL format, coming mostly from PC. Is there a simple way to send plot files directly to plotter, bypassing printer drivers ?

Well, Rick, I'll repost my question :) It's a MAC G3, but I guess it's unimportant The plotter is an HP 500, connected i guess to a parallel port (also unimportant...) The problem is : It's possible to send a file DIRECTLY to the plotter (or a printer...) without passing to printer driver ? I'm a MS-windows user, and on it it's quite easy to send a file (no matter what file) to the printer-spooler.... Better explained (I hope :-) ) I use a Cad on Windows, plot a drawing on a file instead of plotter, send the file over internet to a friend that has Mac G3, and he should be able to send that file to the plotter.... Thanx for your answer anyway

Once again, "rick e" demonstrates why he needs to be permanently banned from this forum... Is there a particular reason you're trying to bypass the printer driver? GraphicConverter can open HPGL-format files, I believe, but any time you print on a Mac, the file gets sent through a printer driver of some sort. Even when sending a file to a spooler, the spooler has to be associated with some kind of printer for it to work. My approach, not knowing your reason for wanting to bypass the printer, would be to open the files with GraphicConverter, convert them to a usable format from within that application, and then print them, probably still from within GraphicConverter. GraphicConverter can be found at versiontracker.com. p

The Pickle, thanx for your answer :) The main reason why I must bypass printer driver, is that there's no printer driver for my friend's plotter !!! Not for Mac, at least.... The plotter understands HPGL format, my friend's CAD prints in PS format, and I found a program to convert from PS to HPGL... And, more, I have a CAD on PC that prints in HPGL format too, and I need to send him plot files often. I 'now I could convert my HPGL to Postscript, send him postscript, have him to load it into his CAD (with all caveats of format conversions...), tell him to use an old HP driver that takes benefit of only 10% of new plotter features and print it.... What I'm searching is a quick-and-dirty way to avoid the triple format conversion, which leads in waste of time and plot quality, sending the file directly to plotter port ! Again, thanx for your answer :-)

If there's no Mac driver for the plotter your friend is using, which wouldn't totally surprise me, there's no way he's going to be able to print on that plotter. Not the answer you were hoping for, I suspect, but at least an answer :/ p