Re: Fwd: RE: lpr printing difficulties

[Frank Smith <frank@artair.com>]

-On Wednesday, December 16, 1998, 4:19 PM -0600 Kent West
<kent.west@infotech.acu.edu> wrote:

>> 
>> Anyone know anything about what Kent West is referring to (see below)
>> about input filters, bounce queues, etc?  Yes, I am using PCL on my HP 4
>> plus, and trying to get netscape (Postscript?) to print to it.  Also,
>> still having trouble just using lpr to print normal documents.
>> 

input filter: a program that processes data sent to the print queue
to make it suitable for a particular printer or format.  It is the
'if:' line in the printcap. However, if you are using a remote (non-
locally attached, i.e. networked) printer then the if: entry is
ignored as it assumes all such processing should be done on the
system with the printer locally attached (to prevent the data from
being proceessed twice, I assume was the original intent).
 
bounce queue: a print queue that doesn't actually have a printer, but
spools data. Usually set up to use /dev/null as the output device, and
the input filter is a program that formats the data and then prints
to a remote printer. This is a way to get around the limitation of
not being able to use an input filter on a remote queue.

I think that the *nix versions of Netscape assume a Postscript printer,
so you need to set up a queue that calls ghostscript to convert the
Postscript to whatever your printer understands, and then queues it
to the remote printer.   

Good luck,

Frank