Hi guys,
A few of you might remember the IBM LPFK bulk-order a couple of years
back, and the ensuing chaos of figuring out the control protocol (which
was eventually resolved when Michael Brutman found some old IBM protocol
docs which covered the LPFK).
I figure I've been sitting on the code for long enough: it's time to
make a proper release!
Anyone who wants to have a play with this is welcome to do so: the code
is on my website, under "Code :: liblpfk", or if you'd prefer a direct
link:
http://www.philpem.me.uk/code/liblpfk/
I've also uploaded my fork of Eric Smith's "tumble" utility, a
TIFF-to-PDF converter. I found a couple of bugs (which haven't been
fixed seven months later) and figured it was a shame not to share the
patches. After all, it is open-source :)
URL for that is
http://www.philpem.me.uk/code/ -- click "Tumble". At
some point I'll give this a separate page instead of just linking to the
version-control repository, and may well document the control file
format (which IIRC isn't documented at the moment).
Somewhat offtopic, but I've also released a driver for one of the
Brother P-touch label printers. I needed labels for my spare parts boxes
and really didn't feel like making them with a Dymo gun when I had a
perfectly good stock database (which is next on the 'stuff to release'
list) which I could use as a data source for said labels. Work smarter
not harder and all that ;)
These were written for Linux, but should work decently well on BSD too.
Forget running them on Windows unless you want to port the serial-line
(liblpfk) and/or usb-lp (libptouch) stuff across... I didn't (this be a
Linux-only ship, yarrr!)
Comments, criticism and so on should be sent to the address below.
Sensible patches are, as always, gratefully received 8^)
FYI: I'm working on getting a copyright release from university for the
DiscFerret software. At the moment half the Department of Computer
Science is on holiday so this is proving somewhat difficult... PCB
design is still ongoing, though a lack of funds means it might be a
while before I get prototype PCBs made.
I'm hoping to release the firmware, microcode and decoder engine under
the GPL or LGPL, and the hardware access library will most likely be
distributed under a "BSD-with-attribution" type license (I forget, is
that 3-clause or 4-clause?). Either way, it'll be GPL-compatible (for
obvious reasons!) and commercial-use-allowed.
Thanks,
--
Phil.
philpem at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/