The nightmarish problem of installing a printer

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2010, Frank Shute wrote:
> I'm not going to tell you how to print with CUPS as it's too
> complicated and fragile for my liking.

Agreed.

> Have you thought about using lpd(8)? If your printer can understand
> Postscript (and I believe HP Laserjets can) then this can be a fairly
> simple process as you just send the raw PS to the printer with lpr(1)
> via a spool and filter.
>
> My filter:
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> cat -
> echo "\f"
>
> #

That might not even be necessary; it just adds a formfeed to the job, 
which PostScript doesn't need.  Helps with some PCL jobs, and PS 
printers usually do PCL also.

> and my printcap(5) isn't overly complicated either and the format is
> well documented in it's manpage.

My lpd doc is an attempt to put everything about lpd in one place, with 
simple but complete examples:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html