Newbie lpd printing

[Tom Parquette]

Gary Schenk wrote:

>This FreeBSD newbie has even learned  how to print! I'm using lpd to print and  
>it works fine from the console. I'm using an old Epson with the hpif filter 
>from the FreeBSD handbook, using uniprint as the device. 
>
>However, it does not work in KDE. I've read the KDE printing handbook, but 
>have not found much there.
>
>It seems to be an input filter problem. My /etc/printcap file calls on hpif, 
>which does print text  files to the Epson just fine, yet the results I get in 
>KDE seem to indicate that the input filter is not working. Does KDE use 
>/etc/printcap?  Have I missed something in setting up printing for KDE? 
>Basically all I've done is click "print" in the application, choose lpd, and 
>ok.
>
>I'm not good at scripts yet, so maybe that is the problem? Here is my input 
>filter file:
>
>#!/bin/sh
>
># Treat LF as CR+LF
>
>printf "\033&k2g" || exit 2
>
># Now read first two characters of the file to determine if PostScript or not
># and apply the appropiate massaging
>
>IFS="" read -r first_line
>first_two_chars=`expr "$first_line" : '\(..\)'`
>
>if [ "$first_two_chars" = "%!" ]; then
>
>        exec 3>&1 1>&2
>        /usr/local/bin/gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=uniprint \
>                -sOutputFile=/dev/fd/3 - && exit 0
>
>#
>        /usr/local/bin/gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=uniprint \ 
>                -sOutputFile=- - && exit 0
>
>        else
>                echo "$first_line" && cat && printf "\033&10H" &&
>        exit 0
>        fi 
>
>        exit 2
>
>
>Thanks.
>Gary Schenk
>_______________________________________________
>freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
>http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
>To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>
>  
>
Gary,
I do not pretend to  be an expert but here are my 2 cents...
I do not use KDE so I can't help there but I do know printcap is used by 
lpd directly.
If you can lpr something to the printer, e.g. /etc/rc.conf, and it 
prints correctly, I would look elsewhere for the problem.
I recently started using apsfilter (from ports/print) and it's working 
for me (for the most part.)
Cheere...