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(OT?) general help understanding printing system



Hi everyone,

As a result of my printer breaking down catastrophically, I have come
to realize that I have precious little iedea of how printing works,
how CUPS is different from other systems, etc.  So, first of all, this
is a question: can anyone recommend a relatively approachable guide to
the subject?  

Second, I thought I'd ask whether the general notion I have of the
print process is correct.  I reckon it's something like this, at least
with CUPS, which I use (or rather, don't use, isnce for the past 4
months my  printer has steadfastly refused to print:

- the printer communicates its existence to the kernel, which assigns
  the printer to a device file.
- The printing system recognizes, or is told about, the printer, and
  interacts with it through a 'driver'
- when a print command is issued by the user (either via the gui or
  the command line) this command is passed to the print system, which
  assigns the job to a printer after passing it through a set of
  filters, at least one of which is probably ghostscript, which
  converts to (or is it from?) postscript.  

Is this right?  And I guess what I really want to know is:  is CUPS
really my best bet for printing, given that I've been having such
difficulty with it at the moment?  I just imagine there must be a
simpler way: some way of passing the printjob to PostScript for
parsing, then to a printer-specific driver, then bakc out, without
bothering with CUPS.  I say this because, while I love the CUPS in
terface, I just can't get the damned thing to work for me right now!!
I figure if I could work at a (very slightly!) lower level, I might be
able to figure out where the problem is -- as it stands, stuff just
doesn't ocme out of my printer right now!!  I's pretty frustrating.  

anyway...  thanks as usual,
matt



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