Issues with M806X and PCL printing of uploaded fonts 1

[ElijahL]

We've just setup and have started configuring our new M806X and after enabling PJL drive access and uploading fonts to the storage using Jetadmin I've found the fonts listed but not displaying in the PCL report. The only bit of info online that seems close to my issue was a document which makes little sense to me by a Hugh Hood noting a Chris Hutchinson where TTF fonts are not being properly uploaded to a printer. I've somewhat made progress fumbling through a PCL Paraphernalia tool and converted "though I'm unsure if its proper" into a soft font and that made the font usable but lost upon reboot.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? One font that I am trying to load is the USPS IMB Standard barcode font. These same fonts worked fine on our older 4300, 5200, 9050, and M602 model printers.

 

[Hugh Hood]

For completeness, I corresponded with Elijah off-list and by his making changes to the pclresourcefile referencing the USPS IMB barcode font as detailed in my white paper entitled USING FLASH AND HARD DRIVE PJL RESIDENT TRUETYPE FONTS ON HP PCL 5 PRINTERS, Link, he was able to display the font on the printer's PCL font listing report.

I know Elijah was continuing to work to fine tune the matter, and I hope he will share any new information here.

FWIW, I wrote that white paper shortly after a discussion on the HP forums with the late Chris Hutchinson [DansDadUK]. Unfortunately, I believe Chris passed before he saw my completed work and thus I never had the benefit of his feedback on it.

 

[ElijahL]

To add some more information. While I was able to get the single font to work I could only get a single font to work. Any manipulation of the PCLResource file for a second font or more would cause me to lose rendering of the one font and then additional anomalies would occur with fonts that were uploaded. I was able to work around and perhaps isolate my issues by downgrading the affected M602 and M806 printers to version 3.7.01 of the FutureSmart firmware. Upgrading to v3.8 or later of FutureSmart broke the functionality on both printers. In the v3.8 release notes I found one interesting note.

Upgraded the font library to UFST 7.3.1. The focus areas are Error handling for TrueType fonts and OpenType CFF fonts.

I believe it is this upgrade that has broken the rendering of my Internal or Flash Storage loaded TTF. HP had me jump through several hoops to no avail finally referring me to their Font Solutions dept where I can pay to get a custom font solution using soft fonts. Unfortunately that is a final measure as it will no doubt require re-coding hundreds of our legacy applications. For now I will just keep these printers on the older firmware. I don't know what we will do when we can't acquire any more printers that can run v3.7.01 firmware.

I'd also like to thank you again Hugh for your help earlier. If anything it might me a few less programs needing rewrites as there are some applications that do only use one custom font.