How to set up a network-attached printer

[Chris Hill]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Warren Block wrote:

[snip]

> For extra points, add another printcap entry for lp: that will print 
> plain text.

I did something essentially identical to what Warren outlined, and it's 
worked fine for many years now, since long before I'd ever heard of 
CUPS. Here's the printcap entry:

# HP color laser
lp|snow|snowball|lj|ps|HP ColorLaserJet 4550N:\
         :sh:\
         :sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
         :mx#0:\
         :lp=:rm=snowball:rp="auto":

By using various names separated by pipe symbols, they are all 
equivalent. Since one of them is lp, you can just send text to the 
printer and it works, e.g.

  $ lpr textfile

I think that "lp" being the first entry makes it lpr's default; not 
positive about that.

> /usr/ports/print/enscript* is nice for that, or lots of people use 
> /usr/ports/print/apsfilter so they can send about anything to the 
> printer and let it do the conversion.

The printer should already know how to print text. Just send it via lpr; 
no additional software needed.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
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