Printing help

[jennyw <jennyw@dangerousideas.com>]

I've been looking at past posts on printing and I've been reading 
linuxprinting.org and I'm still kind of confused.  Mostly what I want is 
to be able to print the programs I use, like OpenOffice, mutt, and plain 
text files.  I never realized it could be such a challenge ...

First of all, I'm not sure how printing works.  The basic understanding I
have is that most applications either generate plain text or postscript
and put it into the print spool.  Applications print to the print spool by
piping output to a command.  This command (lpr is the one I've seen) is
provided by the printing system, whether it's CUPS, LPD, or PDQ.  Once it
gets to the printing system, they then pass this to Ghostscript if it's
postscript.  Then stuff goes back to the printing system where it figures
out the native way to talk to the printer (or passes it to gimp-print?).  
Am I even close here?  I would like to understand this, but mostly I want
to print.

I tried installing cupsys, cupsomatic, cupsys-bsd, and the packages that
they depend on.  I was able to connect to localhost:631 and setup an HP LJ
on my parallel port. When I try printing a test page, though, it doesn't
work, though.

Any suggestions?

If it makes any difference, I use GNOME. 

Thanks!

Jen



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