Re: Printing help
Thanks! I'm starting to understand how printing works better. It's good
to know that most programs send stuff to the lp or lpr programs.
I finally got printing to work. Turns out that it was a physical problem
-- something was pressing on the cable and causing it to not connect to
the computer very well (I didn't notice it when I shoved the computer into
place -- it's in a hard to reach place). So printing is now working! I'm
not entirely sure how, though.
I'm using Woody (up to date as of yesterday). I installed cupsys,
cupsys-bsd (because someone told me lpr lives here), cupsomatic, and
libgimpprint1. I previously had the gs ghostscript package installed.
I don't know if the cupsomatic install was necessary (I'm using an HP LJ
4L via the parallel port). I also can't find documentation on it -- I'm
assuming that CUPS just knows it's there? I didn't see a lot of printer
choices come up when I was using the Web interface to install the printer.
I kind of thought that from installing cupsomatic I'd see a list of more
vendors!
I'm pretty sure libgimpprint1 is not necessary -- looking through the
packages again, I probably need to apt-get install cupsys-driver-gimpprint
in order to use gimp-print. At this point, I'm not sure what advantage
there would be to installing that. The description for the package says
that it has good image quality, but I haven't noticed that not having it
is making my printing output look bad. Then again, I haven't printed
much. Any opinions on gimp-print with CUPS?
I don't think gs is being used right now because cupsys requires
cupsys-pstoraster, which seems to be it's PostScript processor. However,
I noticed that the cupsys-driver-gimpprint package requires gs, so maybe
if I install cupsys-driver-gimpprint then it'll use gs instead of
cupsys-pstoraster?
I'll keep reading and searching for info, but if anyone has any ideas to
enlighten me, I'd really appreciate it!
Thanks!
Jen
On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 10:55:47PM -0400, Hubert Chan wrote:
> >>>>> "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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