Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

> In message <alpine.BSF.2.00.1110270834540.94311 at wonkity.com>,
> Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
>
>> ...
>>> The only thing that worries me about my rather ad-hoc way of setting up
>>> a "personal" printer (as describe above) is that I sort of wonder what
>>> will happen if I ever try to print something when something else is
>>> currently printing.
>>
>> There's also the issue of printing large files, which will tie up the
>> command line until the printer has buffered them all...
>
> "Tie up the command line" ??
>
> John Levine attempted to make the same point, and I'm still not really getting
> it.  This is why we have X!  I can have all of the "command lines" that I want,
> and I frequently do.  I have at least 15 different xterm windows open as we
> speak, so I really don't see "tying up the command line" as a real issue.

A better example would be a web browser or word processor.  The program 
stops responding to further input until the printer has received the 
entire print job.  This bothered people enough that they came up with 
lpd/lpr, which is part of the base FreeBSD system and works well.  It's 
been around long enough for problems to have been worked out.