Re: Printing in KDE - How best to - Konq, inkjet
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On Saturday 19 January 2002 02:59 am, tluxt wrote:
> Thanks for your help. If you can answer these few more questions,
> we might have the essentials for a
> "Debian/KDE/Printing Mini-HowTo or Install Guide section". :)
That would be sweet.
> --- David Bishop <tech@bishop.dhs.org> wrote:
> > [I am writing this email in the mode of you also not being extremely
> > familiar with how debian does things. There's no shame there, it's big
> > and there's a lot to learn. If you already know some of this, I
> > apologize.]
>
> Excellent presumption. Actually, I could use slightly more detail, see
> below. :)
No problem. I'm going to do some snipping to get this down to size, so I
hope you kept my previous mail :-)
> My questions are for the simplest case: a stand alone workstation,
> connected to the internet through some means.
Good. That's easy.
> (One thing I am confused about: I would like to know the procedure for
> getting printing running with the KDE in Woody.
>
> But, I am confused because it appears that you have described two ways to
> get CUPS configured and the print driver installed: One relies on the
> browser interface, one relies on using the KDE control panel.
My mistake. I should have explained what cups is :-) Cups has a
client/server setup, even when you are using soley one machine. So the first
step (edit the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf) is to configure where the cups server
will be listening (what ports and interfaces) and what the passwords are to
connect to it. IIRC, there isn't *much* more than that. The second stage,
connecting to the cups server with a web browser, is to set up the server to
print to your printer, i.e., "configure the driver/install the printer"
stage. At this stage, you can choose to print a test page, and it should
come out fine. However, to tell the *clients* (i.e., the programs) what and
where to connect to, you need to configure them. This is when you open up
the KDE Printing dialog, and tell it to connect to the cups server on
localhost, it does, it retrieves a list of printers that are configured, you
select the one you set up, and now all KDE apps can automagically print to
the cups server. I hope that's a slightly better explanation of what's going
on :-)
> Are these indeed two alternative methods, or are they different functions?
> Ie, does the browser based setup need to be done before the KDE CUPS
> control panel stuff can be done?
See above.
> Ie, is the browser method necessary for doing the CUPS setup, and then,
> once everything is set up, the control panel interaction is used to make
> the KDE system aware of how to let KDE apps access the printer that was set
> up in CUPS (using the web browser interface to the CUPS system)? )
Yes!
> So, if I am running the 020118 or later Woody,
> [The konq-help-about screen says I'm running Konq 2.2.1 on KDE 2.2.2, IIRC,
> and I installed it about 1 week ago.]
> do I need to do the browser based config, or can I skip that, & do all the
> CUPS setup with the kdelibs3-cups procedure you mentioned at the end of
> your comments?
No! B-)
> ====================================================================
>
> OK, Please tell me, is this procedure _exactly_ correct?
> (Are there any changes you suggest to this procedure?)
>
> Here is what I have done so far:
> 1) Do a basic Woody install (including setting up networking access)
> 2) Install X (from, I think it was Tasksel)
> 3) Install KDE (from, again, I think Tasksel)
> 4) At the command prompt, type "startx", then log into KDE.
>
> Now, for these next steps, do I just do these apt-get's, and answer any
> questions asked, and that's it?
Yes.
> Specifically: Do I need to do anythning here about
> dependencies/recommends/etc? _Are_ there any deps/recs?
> If so, do the exact apt-get lines below install an appropriate set of
> deps/recs/etc?
Ah, new to debian I see :-) apt-get takes care of all *dependencies* for
you. It doesn't necessarily take care of *recommends*, but if you apt-get
install cupsys, you are gauruneteed (wow, my spelling sucks) that you will
have a functional cups server. Behold: the power of apt B-)
> Or, do I have to do something else to get the deps/recs in? If so, what?
> Is this the complete set of what I need to apt-get?
> Which would be best? Should I apt-get these? Use dselect? Use tasksel?
> (Is there a CUPS task?)
I always use apt-get/apt-cache, due to excessive problems with dselect. Once
you get used to how apt-* works, you find that it's very powerful. For
instance, if you apt-cache show cupsys, you see that it suggests:
cupsys-client, cupsys-bsd, cupsys-driver-gimpprint | cupsomatic-ppd
that is, *client, *bsd, and *driver-gimpprint OR cupsomatic-ppd. Whether you
should get the gimp driver or ppd depends on the model of printer, and as
such, you'll probably just have to try them both. You'll also note that it
depends on cupsys-pstoraster, which provides the postscript2printer support
you ask about farther down.
> 5) apt-get install cupsys
> 6) apt-get install cupsys-client
> 7) edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
> [Specifically: What kinds of changes will I need to be making here?
> Or, maybe you don't need to answer this question. Since you said
> the file is well documented, perhaps it will be obvious what I need
> to do once I get to this step.)
Yes, and see above.
> 8) Restart cups (/etc/init.d/cupsys restart),
> 9) Point any webbrowser at http://server:631 .
> Log on using the username and password that you set up.
> Click on something like "manage printers",
> then "add printer", which will walk you through adding a printer.
> Fill out the stuff it asks (printer type, port number).
> Print the test page.
>
> What (if anything) do I have to do to get lp available? (apt-get install lp
> ?)
lp is provided in the cupsys-client package. And as it's a "cups-enabled"
lp, you can use it without configuration (i.e., once your cupsd is working
properly, you should be able to lp foo.ps without any more work).
> Re qtcups:
> a) What is the purpose of qtcups? What is it used for?
> b) is the procedure to install it:
> 10) apt-get install qtcups
It is a graphical version of lp, that allows you to change stuff like
orientation and page count. I forgot to mention that qtcups depends on a
good /etc/cups/client.conf to work properly. Edit that file and put
in"ServerName localhost". That should be the only line uncommented. It's
usage is something like qtcups foo.txt, whereupon which it pops up a dialog
box that's fairly intuitive.
> 11) Use lp or qtcups to happily print away.
>
> Where is the doc on qtcups? man qtcups? Does doc get installed
> automatically into the KDE help system "contents" section?
> Where do I read to find out how to use qtcups?
> Do you know a web page pertaining to qtcups?
> (Is it at TrollTech, KDE, CUPS, independent?)
If you install qtcups, there are two placed to start looking for
documentation: man qtcups, and /usr/share/doc/qtcups. That goes for all
debian packages, btw. If there is indeed a seperate documentation package
for qtcups, then in /usr/share/doc/qtcups, there will be a README.Debian (or
something similar) that says: If you want the documentation, install
qtcups-docs. Now, for a small program like this, it is highly unlikely that
they seperated them out, but that's the SOP. You can also do an "apt-cache
search qtcups" to see any package related to qtcups. Do that now to see what
I mean :-)
> 12) If you are running kde 2.2.2,
> apt-get install kdelibs3-cups
> goto the control center, find printing, add your printer in there.
> Now all kde apps can print to it.
>
>
> You didn't mention Ghostscript. Is that necessary? Will I be able to
> print web pages from Konq without it, on a simple inkjet printer, using the
> above setup?
AFAIK, you don't need to install gs. However, if in the course of apt-get
this stuff, it tries to download it, let it :-) Fair warning, though not
related to the task at hand, konq isn't really all the great for printing out
web pages, esp. if they have forms in them. Just FYI.
> Thanks again. I know this is a lot of questions to answer! Of course, no
> need to make long answers - brief answers are probably fine. (Ie, don't
> get overworked!) If you can take the time to answer them, I think you will
> have saved me, and many future people setting up KDE printing, vast amounts
> of time. Thanks!
Again, no problem, it's easier for me to do this (reply to direct questions)
than it is to try and write good documentation (which is now your job ;-)
> (I will take your reply, try to generate a clean procedure, and post it
> here again shortly, so we can get a great document created.)
Thanks!
- --
D.A.Bishop
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