How to access CUPS printer from wine applications ?

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Mon Apr 25 09:35:35 UTC 2016


On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 14:35:14 +0530, Manish Jain wrote:
> I am trying to do something complicated with my HP 1112 printer that is 
> working very nicely with cups. I want my Microsoft applications (MS 
> Office::Word 2000 chiefly) installed under Wine to be able to access the 
> printer. Is there any way I can do  that ?

Not tested, just an idea:

If Wine has networking functionality, you could enable the printer
in CUPS for sharing on the "virtual network" and then access it
as a network printer from within the application that wants to
print. The default output should be PS (Postscript), as this is
the easiest (and standard) format to feed into printer queues.
Make sure to restrict the printer access locally.

If this fails, you could use the "Print to file" functionality
and save the file to a specific directory that's accessible from
the application running under Wine. Use "winecfg" to assign a
"drive letter" to that directory, so it's easier to write files
there (for example P: for "printer"). Then have a shell script
check for new files in that directory and feed them to lpr, then
delete it. As I said, when this is PS data, it shouldn't be
problematic.

Wine's access to USB, and then using the "Windows" software for
printing, is probably not possible to achieve.

Also keep in mind Wine probably doesn't have a full printing
subsystem and sufficient driver support. Doing so from a VM
(with a "Windows" installed in it) is surely easier, but also
more "voluminous".

Follow-up question:

Why don't you install OpenOffice / LibreOffice / AbiWord and use
your documents from there? Is there a reason to use a more than
15 years old office application? Do you have a specific need to
make it that complicated? :-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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