beginner not printing
Hi,
I really thought with the wealth of web sites, howto's and the such like, that I would be able to set up printers to run with my system, after all printers are such basic bits of kit. Well was I wrong. I *cannot* get printers working properly. I am close, but not close enough.
I have three machines and two printers. One is a HP Deskjet 610C and it is on the local parallel port of my main machine. The other is a HP Laserjet 1200 which is on its own network node on 192.168.1.106 (legolas). I have tried to run cups, but success with the Laserjet was intermittent and there was no output to the Deskjet at all. I was going to reinstall Debian on this machine anyway and the frustration that printing was causing me only made me do it sooner rather than later.
At present I have installed "printtool" which created /etc/printcap. I know that I am close because printtool has the option to print test pages and *both* printers print on request the postscript test page, and it comes out perfectly, however *neither* of them will print the ASCII test page. I want to print from inside emacs, abiword, gnumeric, and galeon, but the print commands generate the suggestion that they are spooling, but there is no hard copy output.
I obtained a copy of HP_Laserjet_1200.ppd and put it in /usr/share/postscript/ppd. I made myself a member of the "lp" group. I don't know if that was strictly necessary, but I tried it
I have not added the /etc/printcap to this message but if anyone feels this is the place to look for the problem then I will stick it up here. I know I am missing something fundamental, but I cannot see the wood for the trees, nothing I read seems to move me any closer to printed pages. Has anyone else trod this road before and able to aid me.
I really am trying to get on with Linux, but the biggest problem is that it regularly makes me feel like a fool so often!
Keith.
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____________________________________
Keith O'Connell.
Maidstone, Kent. (UK)
keith_oconnell@blueyonder.co.uk
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