print question: cups and lpr

[Danny Pansters]

On Tuesday 7 March 2006 17:44, Gary Kline wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 11:33:02AM +0000, Danny Pansters wrote:
> > On Tuesday 7 March 2006 08:21, Gary Kline wrote:
> > >         On my test system  I'm defaulting to "cups"; printing on any
> > >         flavor of *nix has always been painful ... which is why I
> > >         stick with plain ol' lpr::: it Just-Works{tm}.  So on my
> > >         printserver and everywhere else I have lpr/lpd going.
> > >
> > >         Under Gnome on my test platform I've tried to get things to
> > >         print via my printsrver.  I see that Gnome thinks things are
> > >         printing.  Not.  Do any of you print wizards know what I'm
> > >         missing?
> >
> > Usually this is caused by confusion over which lpr to use. The one that
> > comes with base (lpd) is in /usr/bin, the one installed by cups is
> > in /usr/local/bin. When searching $PATH the first will be used, which is
> > the wrong one. IIRC the cups port has a 'make replace' target. Or (what I
> > usually do): cp /usr/bin/lpr /usr/bin/lpr.not and I put NO_LPR=yes in
> > /etc/make.conf so that when rebuilding world all of lpd is skipped.
>
> 	Are you saying that, in effect, I should use cups on my
> 	printserver?  --or at least use the cups lpr?

Well, no, you should use whatever works best for you. I'm only saying that 
cups is probably well worth investigating and that it works great for me 
(with KDE I might add, I don't run gnome). And that the common faq if it 
doesn't print is $PATH confusion over which lpr binary to use. 

As a matter of fact (but check the docs) I think cups can work just fine with 
existing LPR servers. It can be an LPR server itself.

> > > 	PS:  5 gold stars for anybody who can 'splain why cups exists.
> >
> > Well for just a printer server lpd is fine and maybe easier. But for a
> > desktop where you want a good filter/driver for those shiny PDFs, cups is
> > almost a must. I use a HP all-in-one (and before that an officejet). Good
> > luck writing a printcap for that. Even more so getting a suitable filter.
> > With cups this is automagical, and no sub par quality or bleak colors
> > (well at least with HP's drivers, graphics/hpoj and hpijs). Granted, if
> > you fail to get it running automagically you're in for some reading, but
> > it's well documented. If all you ever do is print plain text then cups
> > may be overkill.
>
> 	I've got the ghostscript stuff set up for my HP Deskjet-500
> 	(still using since 1992).  lpr -> hpif (I think); hpif calls
> 	the ghostscript tools and I can print anything. Postscript,
> 	pdf, graphics, OO files, whatever.

OK. hpif == hpijs? I guess so.

> > Also, cups supports several protocols, most prominently ipp which
> > arguably is the standard now. Since I have my printer hanging on the
> > network this comes in handy.
> >
> > My experience with lpd getting it to print decently with magicfilter on
> > the officejet was always rather painful. Cups just works. It also does
> > scanning and I can read my camera's flash card with it, but that has
> > nothing to do with cups, rather with the device drivers.
> >
> > HTH,
>
> 	A little, thanks.  If I use the cups lpr on my printserver,
> 	will/(*should*) my test server with Gnome and cups just-work,
> 	or is that a black-hole question?  Are there are cups type
> 	tutorials around?  I haven't googled around.

Cups has a webserver running on localhost port 631 from where you can set 
everything up. This is (not perfectly) integrated with KDE. Don't know about 
Gnome.

Cups has documentation where you expect it: /usr/local/share/doc/cups/

>
> 	The nutshell of it is that when I first started messing with
> 	SVR2 in 1986 (then SVR4, then FreeBSD) it took weeks (totaled)
> 	to get things-printer working with lpr/lpd.  It's time to get
> 	out of my Ludditeism and move to CUPS.

Well "there must be something easier" :) It's probably cups. Together with the 
docs that come with hpijs/hpoj ports (not mandatory I think but if you have a 
deskjet even an older one hpijs may be of interest) you should be able to get 
it going. Use the cups CLI commands or web interface to cups, look at Gnome 
later (perhaps once cups is set up a reboot or restarting gnome will do).

I'm not a cups expert in any way but might be able to help a bit along the way 
if needed. I tend to stay away from the cups utilities/web interface unless I 
need to redo the setup or something. Then the KDE printer stuff sometimes 
seems to not be in synch with what you'd do in the web interface. So for real 
maintenace I bypass KDE, for normal usage (cleaning the queue and such)it 
works fine.

Perhaps someone else could elaborate a bit about cups w/ gnome.

>
> 	gary

Cheers,

Dan