Re: Windows and Printing Systems

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Pigeon wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 04:56:32AM -0600, Kent West wrote:
>  
>
> > Marius Amado Alves wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > * Printing/CUPS *
> > > I managed to install cupsys via apt-get and added a printer with the web
> > > interface, but this printer does not show up in the print dialog of the
> > > applications. It's an HP DeskJet on the parallell port. What am I 
> > > missing?
> > >      
> > [Rant]
> > I'd love to help you, but printing on Linux is _still_ a black art. I've 
> > been using Debian exclusively on my boxes for about four years now, and 
> > I generally just avoid printing if I can. Of course everyone's going to 
> > come back on this comment and say "Use CUPS! It's ultra easy!" or "You 
> > did replace the obsolete lpr with lprng, right?" and such, but then you 
> > still have to tell Mozilla to print to "qtcups" or to "lpr -PmyPrinter 
> > --use-secret-incantation" and configure OpenOffice.org (somehow . . .) 
> > and, and, and, and it's just black magic as far as I can tell. And I'm 
> > not a stupid person. So the short answer is, "Good luck!"
> > [/End_of_Rant]
> >    
>
> I install cupsys-bsd, and in the "Print Command" dialog box of any
> application I'm printing from I enter "lp". I haven't used
> OpenOffice.org, but this works for everything else I've tried,
> including mozilla.
>
>  
The one machine I tried this on did not work that way (I finally 
resorted to using qtcups as the command, which works fine). Of course, I 
was printing to a color network printer via IP. And that's my point. 
Sure cups works, here, here, and here. But once you start throwing in 
the exceptions, a winprinter here, a network printer there, a usb 
printer over yon, it seems that there's no canonical solution. I've had 
enough success to know that most problems can be overcome, but I can't 
answer the original poster's questions, because there's never a 
consistent pattern that works for me.

Don't take this as whining; I'm just saying that my perception of 
printing in Linux is that it's still a black art, and I'm not wizard 
enough to solve the problem remotely (whereas if I were sitting at his 
machine I could probably eventually beat it into submission).

--
Kent