RE: newbie Printing question
Steve Witt wrote:
> 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.
Thanks for the info Steve. I went ahead and istalled CUPS, found a
"mini-HowTo" on how to set it up and now I can print from all my
applications.
Thanks again,
Tom
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