>>>>> "jennyw" == jennyw <jennyw@dangerousideas.com> writes: jennyw> I've been looking at past posts on printing and I've been jennyw> reading linuxprinting.org and I'm still kind of confused. jennyw> Mostly what I want is to be able to print the programs I use, jennyw> like OpenOffice, mutt, and plain text files. I never realized jennyw> it could be such a challenge ... It is unfortunately very hard to set up printing properly. The upside is that the printing system is very flexible (which, unfortunately, means nothing to the average home user). jennyw> First of all, I'm not sure how printing works. The basic jennyw> understanding I have is that most applications either generate jennyw> plain text or postscript and put it into the print spool. jennyw> Applications print to the print spool by piping output to a jennyw> command. This command (lpr is the one I've seen) is provided by jennyw> the printing system, whether it's CUPS, LPD, or PDQ. Once it jennyw> gets to the printing system, they then pass this to Ghostscript jennyw> if it's postscript. Then stuff goes back to the printing system jennyw> where it figures out the native way to talk to the printer (or jennyw> passes it to gimp-print?). Am I even close here? I would like jennyw> to understand this, but mostly I want to print. Mostly right. Just incorrect in some details, but the overall picture is there. The output from the application does not have to be plain text or postscript, though those are the most common. An intelligent spooler, or a spooler with an intelligent output filter, will be able to handle many different types of files. The default CUPS setup seems to also be able to handle PDF, HPGL, and various image formats. lpr is probably the most common command for sending files to the printer (but there are different implementations of lpr -- they should all work about the same). lp is probably the second. Beyond that, there isn't really much -- most software will use one or the other -- but I'm sure someone out there has hacked his/her own program. Ghostscript is often used as a final step before the printer, but is (of course) not necessary if the printer understands PostScript natively. The file may also go through a bunch of filtering inside the printing system, to massage it into a format the printer (or Ghostscript) can understand. jennyw> I tried installing cupsys, cupsomatic, cupsys-bsd, and the jennyw> packages that they depend on. I was able to connect to jennyw> localhost:631 and setup an HP LJ on my parallel port. When I try jennyw> printing a test page, though, it doesn't work, though. Can you give us any more information than "it doesn't work"? e.g. Is the printer printing garbage, or not printing anything? Does it look like any data is being sent to the printer? Do you get any error messages? Could you post the contents of /etc/cups/printers.conf? (You'll have to read it as root, but there's nothing terribly secret in that file.) What does running "lpstat" say? Also, you didn't say what version of Debian you're using. Am I correct in assuming you're using the latest stable? (latest stable is version 2.2, a.k.a. "potato" -- "cat /etc/debian_version" if you're unsure.) -- Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/ PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7 5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net. Encrypted e-mail preferred.
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