On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, Tom Connolly wrote:
Hello list, I've just installed Sarge and apsfilter. I went through the setup script and printed a very nice test page to a remote HP LaserJet 5 connected to a Windows 2003 Server machine. Now I'm stuck. Like I say, I'm a newbie so I'm not sure how to print from my applications. Could someone please help.
I don't use apsfilter myself, but do understand a little about printing. I believe you must have installed a 'lower level' print manager/scheduler such as cups or lprng. These programs do the work of submitting the print jobs to the printer whether it be locally connected to the machine, or remotely accessible over a network. You use the commands that this print manager provides to actually print a document. Typically this would be 'lpr' or 'lp'. Read the man page on lpr/lp and also read the documentation that comes with apsfilter.
Now, about printing from applications... Normally you produce a printable document that is sent to your printer by the lpr command. Postscript files (usually <filename>.ps) print directly on the printer (if it is a postscript printer like your Laserjet). Other file types, like ASCII text files can be printed directly or can be converted to postscript with programs like 'a2ps', etc. and sent directly to the printer. There are some applications, like OpenOffice, that print directly to the printer like you are used to doing in the Windows (if I can make the assumption that you come from that world :) ), and have a print command in their menu system somewhere. Another common file format, Adobe Acrobat (pdf files), can be printed from a pdf viewer application. I use 'xpdf', which, when you command it to print a file, actually produces a postscript file that you then send to the printer using lpr.
Hope this doesn't sound too complicated, but the Unix way is that there are a lot of smaller programs that do one or two things, and are used by other programs. So usually you are using a series of programs to accomplish a task instead of one, big, monolithic one as in Windows. Printing is a lot like that. There are programs produce a document, programs that format the document or convert its format and programs that send documents to the printer.