(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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