Re: [Lug-Nuts] newbie printing stuff

From: Beth Camero (beth@compu-diva.com)
Date: Sun Feb 06 2000 - 23:25:39 PST


Gagme, I can't even do the short answer.
RedHat is supposed to have something called printtool to simplify printing
across a network, but damned if I can make it run. The first error message
is that a display variable isn't set, like, what am I supposed to do
then? I ran the Xconfigurator, but either I didn't do it right or
printtool needs yet another thing I've never heard of.

I suspect WordPerfect, which is what I was trying to print out of, has all
the filters it needs.

Sigh. This is disheartening. I can set up printers and print queues on my
Novell servers, and the NT server, no sweat. Can't make even an ounce of
headway on the Linux box.

At 10:02 PM 2/6/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Short answer:
>
>Make sure you have LPRng (RPM or deb or Slackware tgz) installed and get
>apsfilter:
>
>ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/sunsite/system/printing/apsfilter-4.9.9.tar.gz
>
>Long answer:
>
>Printing on Linux is complex. If you have the time, spending a
>weekend with the printing HOWTO can be well justified.
>
>http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO
>
>The old style of printing used to be LPR. The newer "standard" tends
>to be LPRng which was developed at San Diego State and I believe now
>is maintained by some guys at
>
>http://www.astart.com/lprng/LPRng.html
>
>If you know what you are doing, you can print across the net using
>encrypted communication. You also want a good printcap. By default,
>printing on unix will stairstep if you print a text file. If you have a
>postscript printer, and you send postscript to it, it will print it. But
>not all of us have postscript printers. I have an HP LaserJet 4L which
>uses HP's PCL language. Fortunately, if you have an HP Laser priter, you
>are going to find good support for Linux. To make the documents come out
>right, you want a filter. The filter can in some cases determine if you
>are trying to print postscript, an image file, or a text file. It will
>then apply the appropriate filter and send the output to the printer
>in a language that you can understand. For example:
>
>$ lpr image.gif
>
>will automatically print a gif image with the appropriate /etc/printcap
>and filters.
>
>If you go to a sunsite mirror, you will find a number of available
>filters. The aps filter is a good one to start with. It recognizes all
>sorts of printers, and it will work with ghostscript which will emulate
>postscript.
>
>Here is my favorite sunsite mirror for printcap filters.
>
>ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/sunsite/system/printing/
>
>brian
>
>
>On Sun, Feb 06, 2000 at 07:22:54PM -0800, Beth Camero wrote:
> > Could somebody point me in the right direction for printer configuration?
> > I put a linux box on my home network (such as it is) and my printer is
> hooked
> > to my main windows machine. My kid prints to my printer, no problem,
> using the
> > share name, from his windows machine. How do I set something up like
> that in
> > KDE? I got Samba working, and we can all ping each other. I couldn't
> find a
> > man page for it and KDE help was less than helpful. I figure I must
> have to
> > set up a printer share in smb.conf that points to my windows machine,
> but so
> > far that doesn't appear to work, or I have the syntax wrong for the
> share name
> > or something. What should it look like? And then, how do you tie the
> printer
> > icon on the KDE desktop to that?
> > TIA
> > Beth Camero
> > **********************************************************
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>
>--
>Brian Lavender
>http://www.brie.com/brian/
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