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The Linux Printing HOWTO
Grant Taylor
gtaylor+pht@picante.com
Version $Revision: 1.2 $, $Date: 2000/09/19 20:36:53 $
This is the Linux Printing HOWTO, a collection of information on how to generate, preview, print and fax anything under Linux (and other Unices in general).
Table of Contents
[1]Introduction
1.1. [2]History
1.2. [3]Copyright
2. [4]Quick Start
3. [5]How to print
3.1. [6]With PDQ
3.2. [7]With LPD and the lpr command
3.3. [8]GUI Printing Tools
4. [9]Kernel printer devices
4.1. [10]The lp device (kernels <=2.1.32)
4.2. [11]The parport device (kernels >= 2.1.33)
4.3. [12]Serial devices
4.4. [13]USB Devices
5. [14]Supported Printers
5.1. [15]Postscript
5.2. [16]Non-Postscript
5.3. [17]What printers work?
5.4. [18]How to buy a printer
6. [19]Spooling software
6.1. [20]LPD
6.2. [21]PDQ
6.3. [22]LPRng
6.4. [23]PPR
6.5. [24]CUPS
7. [25]How it all works
7.1. [26]PDQ
7.2. [27]LPD
8. [28]How to set things up
8.1. [29]Configuring PDQ
8.2. [30]Configuring LPD
8.3. [31]Large Installations
8.4. [32]Accounting
9. [33]Vendor Solutions
9.1. [34]Red Hat
9.2. [35]Debian
9.3. [36]SuSE
9.4. [37]Caldera
9.5. [38]Corel
9.6. [39]Mandrake
9.7. [40]Other Distributions
10. [41]Ghostscript.
10.1. [42]Invoking Ghostscript
10.2. [43]Ghostscript output tuning
11. [44]Networks
11.1. [45]Printing to a Unix/lpd host
11.2. [46]Printing to a Windows or Samba printer
11.3. [47]Printing to a NetWare Printer
11.4. [48]Printing to an EtherTalk (Apple) printer
11.5. [49]Printing to a networked printer
11.6. [50]Running an if for remote printers with old LPDs
11.7. [51]From Windows.
11.8. [52]From an Apple.
11.9. [53]From Netware.
11.10. [54]Networked Printer Administration
12. [55]Windows-only printers
12.1. [56]The Ghostscript Windows redirector
12.2. [57]HP Winprinters
12.3. [58]Lexmark Winprinters
13. [59]How to print to a fax machine.
13.1. [60]Using a faxmodem
13.2. [61]Using the Remote Printing Service
13.3. [62]Commercial Faxing Services
14. [63]How to generate something worth printing.
14.1. [64]Markup languages
14.2. [65]WYSIWYG Word Processors
15. [66]Printing Photographs
15.1. [67]Ghostscript and Photos
15.2. [68]Paper
15.3. [69]Printer Settings
15.4. [70]Print Durability
15.5. [71]Shareware and Commercial Software
16. [72]On-screen previewing of printable things.
16.1. [73]PostScript
16.2. [74]TeX dvi
16.3. [75]Adobe PDF
17. [76]Serial printers under lpd
17.1. [77]Setting up in printcap
17.2. [78]Older serial printers that drop characters
18. [79]What's missing?
18.1. [80]Plumbing
18.2. [81]Fonts
18.3. [82]Metadata
18.4. [83]Drivers
19. [84]Credits
[85]Index
Introduction
The Printing HOWTO should contain everything you need to know to help you set up printing services on your Linux box(en). As life would have it, it's a bit more complicated than in the point-and-click world of Microsoft and Apple, but it's also a bit more flexible and certainly easier to administer for large LANs.
This document is structured so that most people will only need to read the first half or so. Most of the more obscure and situation-dependent information in here is in the last half, and can be easily located in the Table of Contents, whereas most of the information through section 8 or 9 is probably needed by most people.
If you find this document or the [86]LinuxPrinting.org website useful, consider buying something through my referral association with buy.com or outpost.com; please use the links on the [87]suggested printers page so that your purchase can be credited to LinuxPrinting.org.
Since version 3.x is a complete rewrite, some information from previous editions has been lost. This is by design, as the previous HOWTOs were so large as to be 60 typeset pages, and had the narrative flow of a dead turtle. If you do not find your answers here, you are encouraged to a) look on the [88]LinuxPrinting.org website and b) drop me a note saying what ought to be here but isn't.
The [89]LinuxPrinting.org website is a good place to find the latest version; it is also, of course, distributed from Metalab (metalab.unc.edu) and your friendly local LDP mirror.
1.1. History
This is the fourth generation of the Printing HOWTO. The history of the PHT may be chronicled thusly:
I wrote the printing-howto in 1992 in response to too many printing questions in comp.os.linux, and posted it. This predated the HOWTO project by a few months and was the first FAQlet called a `howto'. This edition was in plain ascii.
After joining the HOWTO project, the Printing-HOWTO was merged with an Lpd FAQ by Brian McCauley <B.A.McCauley@bham.ac.uk>; we continued to co-author the PHT for two years or so. At some point we incorporated the work of Karl Auer <Karl.Auer@anu.edu.au>. This generation of the PHT was in TeXinfo, and available in PS, HTML, Ascii, and Info.
After letting the PHT rot and decay for over a year, and an unsuccessful attempt at getting someone else to maintain it, this rewrite happened. This generation of the PHT is written in SGML using the LinuxDoc DTD and the SGML-Tools-1 package. Beginning with version 3.27, it incorporates a summary of a companion printer support database; before 3.27 there was never a printer compatibility list in this HOWTO (!).
In mid-January, 2000, I found out about the PDQ print "spooler". PDQ provides a printing mechanism so much better than lpd ever did that I spent several hours playing with it, rewrote parts of this HOWTO, and bumped the version number of the document to 4.
In mid-2000, I moved my printing website to www.linuxprinting.org, and began offering more powerful configuration tools there. I also converted the HOWTO to DocBook, and initiated coverage of CUPS, LPRng, and GPR/libppd.
1.2. Copyright
This document is Copyright (c) 1992-2000 by Grant Taylor. Feel free to copy and redistribute this document according to the terms of the GNU General Public License, revision 2 or later.
2. Quick Start
The quickest way to get started is simply to use the setup tools provided by your vendor. Assuming that this includes support for your driver, and assuming that your vendor shipped the driver for your printer, then it should be easy to get a basic setup going this way. For information on vendor-provided setup tools, see [90]Section 9.
If your vendor's tool doesn't work out, you should figure out if your printer is supposed to work at all. Consult the printer compatibility listings in [91]Section 5.3.1 as well as the online version described there.
If your printer is known to work with a driver, check that you have that driver, and install if it not. Typically you will be able to find a contributed Ghostscript package including newer Ghostscript code and assorted third-party drivers. If not, you can compile it yourself; the process is not trivial, but it is well documented. See [92]Section 10 for more information on Ghostscript.
After installing the proper driver, attempt again to configure your printer with your vendor's tools. If that fails, select a suitable third party tool from those described in [93]Section 8. If that also fails, you'll need to construct your own setup; again see [94]Section 8.
If you're still stuck, you've got a little troubleshooting to do. It's probably best to read most of this document first to get a feel for how things are supposed to work; then you'll be in a better position to debug.
3. How to print
You actually use a different command to print depending on which spooling software you use.
3.1. With PDQ
Most systems today ship with lpd, so this section won't apply. That said, I now recommend that people install and use PDQ in most cases instead of (or in addition to) lpd. PDQ just has much better support for printer options and such.
With PDQ, instead of the lpr command, you use the command [95]pdq or [96]xpdq. Both work much like the traditional lpr in that they will print the files you specify, or stdin if no files are given.
3.1.1. Xpdq
Xpdq is an X Windows application that shows a list of available printers and a summary of the print queue (including current and historical jobs). There are two options under the File menu, one to print specific files, and one to print stdin. You can set whatever options are defined in your printer driver from the Driver Options dialog; typically there will be duplex, resolution, paper type and size settings, and so forth.
3.1.2. Pdq
The PDQ system's command-line printing command is simply called pdq. It can be used in place of the lpr command in most situations; it accepts the -P printer specification argument. Like lpr, it prints either the listed file(s) or stdin.
Printer options can be controlled with the -o and -a options.
3.2. With LPD and the lpr command
If you've already got lpd setup to print to your printer, or your system administrator already did so, or your vendor did so for you, then all you need to do is learn how to use the lpr command. The [97]Printing Usage HOWTO covers this, and a few other queue manipulation commands you should probably know. Or just read the lpr(1) man page.
In a nutshell, you specify the queue name with -P, and specify a filename to print a file, or nothing to print from stdin. Driver options are traditionally not controllable from lpr, but various systems accept certain options with -o, -Z, or -J.
If, however, you have a new system or new printer, then you'll have to set up printing services one way or another before you can print. Read on!
3.3. GUI Printing Tools
Most spooling systems alone offer only a rather basic command-line interface. Rather than use lpr directly, you may wish to obtain and use a front-end interface. These generally let you fiddle with various printing options (the printer, paper types, collation, n-up, etc) in an easy-to-use graphical way. Some may have other features, as well.
3.3.1. GPR
[98]GPR, by Thomas Hubbell, uses code from CUPS to filter Postscript jobs and offer easy user control over job options. Some options (like n-way printing, page selection, etc) are implemented directly by GPR, while most others are implemented by the printer or by the spooler's filter system.
GPR works with LPD or LPRng; or can be compiled specifically for use with VA Linux's modified LPD. When compiled normally, it uses VA's libppd directly to produce printer-specific PostScript which it will then submit to the lpr command. When compiled for VA's LPD, it will submit your unmodified job PostScript to the lpr command, along with the set of job options you specify. This is arguably the better route, since it allows the Postscript to be redirected to a different printer by the spooler when appropriate; unfortunately it required VA's special LPD, which is not in wide circulation yet (although it is of course trivial to install).
To use GPR, first select a printer (by LPD queue name) and check that GPR has loaded the proper PPD file. If it hasn't, you'll need to specify the PPD filename, and specify your printer's options in the Printer Configuration dialog (you get this dialog by pressing the Printer Configuration button; it contains assorted printer setup options defined by the PPD).
Once you've configured your printer in GPR, you can print jobs by specifying the filename and selecting the proper options from the `Common' and `Advanced' tabbed panels. The `Common' options are implemented directly by GPR for all printers, while the `Advanced' options are defined by the PPD file for your printer. You can see these option panels in [99]Figure 2 and [100]Figure 3.
Figure 1. GPR Main Options
[snapshot-gpr-main.gif]
Figure 2. GPR Common Options
[snapshot-gpr-common.gif]
Figure 3. GPR Printer Options
[snapshot-gpr-printer.gif]
3.3.2. XPP
If you use CUPS as your spooler, you can use the program [101]XPP (see [102]Figure 4).
To print with XPP, simply run the xpp program, and specify a file (or nothing, if you're using xpp in place of lpr to print from stdin). Then select a printer from the list of configured printers, and select any options you'd like to apply from the various tabbed panels. See [103]Figure 5 for an example options panel highlighting the standard CUPS options.
You can save your selected printer and all the options with the `Save Settings' button.
Figure 4. XPP Main Window
[snapshot-xpp-main.gif]
Figure 5. CUPS/XPP Options Window
[snapshot-xpp-options.gif]
3.3.3. XPDQ
PDQ can be easily configured to print to queues controlled by most spooling systems, and PDQ's configuration syntax offers a very easy way to define arbitrary filtering and user options for print jobs. So you can thus use xpdq as a front-end to LPD printing with great success.
For more information, see [104]Section 6.2.
4. Kernel printer devices
There are two completely different device drivers for the parallel port; which one you are using depends on your kernel version (which you can find out with the command uname -a). The driver changed in Linux 2.1.33; essentially all current systems will be running kernel 2.2 or later, so you'll probably want to skip ahead to the parport driver section.
A few details are the same for both styles of driver. Most notably, many people have found that Linux will not detect their parallel port unless they disable "Plug and Play" in their PC BIOS. (This is no surprise; the track record for PnP of non-PCI devices with Windows and elsewhere has been something of a disaster).
4.1. The lp device (kernels <=2.1.32)
The Linux kernel (<=2.1.32), assuming you have compiled in or loaded the lp device (the output of cat /proc/devices should include the device lp if it is loaded), provides one or more of /dev/lp0, /dev/lp1, and /dev/lp2. These are NOT assigned dynamically, rather, each corresponds to a specific hardware I/O address. This means that your first printer may be lp0 or lp1 depending on your hardware. Just try both.
A few users have reported that their bidirectional lp ports aren't detected if they use an older unidirectional printer cable. Check that you've got a decent cable.
One cannot run the plip and lp drivers at the same time on any given port (under 2.0, anyway). You can, however, have one or the other driver loaded at any given time either manually, or by kerneld with version 2.x (and later 1.3.x) kernels. By carefully setting the interrupts and such, you can supposedly run plip on one port and lp on the other. One person did so by editing the drivers; I eagerly await a success report of someone doing so with only a clever command line.
There is a little utility called [105]tunelp floating about with which you, as root, can tune the Linux 2.0 lp device's interrupt usage, polling rate, and other options.
When the lp driver is built into the kernel, the kernel will accept an lp= option to set interrupts and io addresses: When the lp driver is built in to the kernel, you may use the LILO/LOADLIN command line to set the port addresses and interrupts that the driver will use.
Syntax: lp=port0[,irq0[,port1[,irq1[,port2[,irq2]]]]]
For example: lp=0x378,0 or lp=0x278,5,0x378,7 **
Note that if this feature is used, you must specify *all* the ports you want considered, there are no defaults. You can disable a built-in driver with lp=0.
When loaded as a module, it is possible to specify io addresses and interrupt lines on the insmod command line (or in /etc/conf.modules so as to affect kerneld) using the usual module argument syntax. The parameters are io=port0,port1,port2 and irq=irq0,irq1,irq2. Read ye the man page for [106]insmod for more information on this.
**For those of you who (like me) can never find the standard port numbers when you need them, they are as in the second example above. The other port (lp0) is at 0x3bc. I've no idea what interrupt it usually uses.
The source code for the Linux 2.0 parallel port driver is in /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/lp.c.
4.2. The parport device (kernels >= 2.1.33)
Beginning with kernel 2.1.33 (and available as a patch for kernel 2.0.30), the lp device is merely a client of the new parport device. The addition of the parport device corrects a number of the problems that plague the old lp device driver - it can share the port with other drivers, it dynamically assigns available parallel ports to device numbers rather than enforcing a fixed correspondence between I/O addresses and port numbers, and so forth.
The advent of the parport device has enabled a whole flock of new parallel-port drivers for things like Zip drives, Backpack CD-ROMs and disks, and so forth. Some of these are also available in versions for 2.0 kernels; look around on the web.
The main difference that you will notice, so far as printing goes, is that parport-based kernels dynamically assign lp devices to parallel ports. So what was lp1 under Linux 2.0 may well be lp0 under Linux 2.2. Be sure to check this if you upgrade from an lp-driver kernel to a parport-driver kernel.
The most popular problems with this device seems to stem from misconfiguration:
The Distribution
Some Linux distributions don't ship with a properly setup
/etc/modules.conf (or /etc/conf.modules), so the driver isn't
loaded properly when you need it to be. With a recent modutils,
the proper magical lines from modules.conf seem to be:
alias /dev/printers lp # only for devfs?
alias /dev/lp* lp # only for devfs?
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc # missing in Red Hat 6.0-6.1
The BIOS
Many PC BIOSes will make the parallel port into a Plug-and-Play
device. This just adds needless complexity to a perfectly
simple device that is nearly always present; turn off the PnP
setting for your parallel prot ("LPT1" in many BIOSes) if your
parallel port isn't detected by the Linux driver. The correct
setting is often called "legacy", "ISA", or "0x378", but
probably not "disabled".
You can also read the [107]parport documentation in your kernel sources, or look at the [108]parport web site.
4.3. Serial devices
Serial devices are usually called something like /dev/ttyS1 under Linux. The utility [109]stty will allow you to interactively view or set the settings for a serial port; [110]setserial will allow you to control a few extended attributes and configure IRQs and I/O addresses for non-standard ports. Further discussion of serial ports under Linux may be found in the [111]Serial-HOWTO.
When using a slow serial printer with flow control, you may find that some of your print jobs get truncated. This may be due to the serial port, whose default behavior is to purge any untransmitted characters from its buffer 30 seconds after the port device is closed. The buffer can hold up to 4096 characters, and if your printer uses flow control and is slow enough that it can't accept all the data from the buffer within 30 seconds after printing software has closed the serial port, the tail end of the buffer's contents will be lost. If the command cat file > /dev/ttyS2 produces complete printouts for short files but truncated ones for longer files, you may have this condition.
The 30 second interval can be adjusted through the "closing_wait" commandline option of setserial (version 2.12 and later). A machine's serial ports are usually initialized by a call to setserial in the rc.serial boot file. The call for the printing serial port can be modified to set the closing_wait at the same time as it sets that port's other parameters.
4.4. USB Devices
I don't have any USB devices to play with, so all I can offer are pointers. Once set up, you end up with the device file /dev/usb/lp0, much as you do with parallel ports, which will work fine in printcap or as a PDQ local-port device.
USB is documented at the [112]Linux USB Website.
5. Supported Printers
The Linux kernel will let you speak with any printer that you can plug into a serial, parallel, or usb port, plus any printer on the network, but this alone is insufficient; you must also be able to generate data that the printer will understand. Primary among the incompatible printers are those referred to as "Windows" or "GDI" printers. They are called this because all or part of the printer control language and the design details of the printing mechanism are not documented. Typically the vendor will provide a Windows driver and happily sell only to Windows users; this is why they are called Winprinters. In some cases the vendor also provides drivers for NT, OS/2, or other operating systems.
Many of these printers do not work with Linux. A few of them do, and some of them only work a little bit (usually because someone has reverse engineered the details needed to write a driver). See the printer support list below for details on specific printers.
A few printers are in-between. Some of NEC's models, for example, implement a simple form of the standard printer language PCL that allows PCL-speaking software to print at up to 300dpi, but only NEC knows how to get the full 600dpi out of these printers.
Note that if you already have one of these Winprinters, there are roundabout ways to get Linux to print to one, but they're rather awkward. See [113]Section 12 in this document for more discussion of Windows-only printers.
5.1. Postscript
As for what printers do work with Linux, the best choice is to buy a printer with native PostScript support in firmware. Nearly all Unix software that produces printable output produces it in PostScript, so obviously it'd be nice to get a printer that supports PostScript directly. Unfortunately, PostScript support is scarce outside the laser printer domain, and is sometimes a costly add-on.
Unix software, and the publishing industry in general, have standardized upon Postscript as the printer control language of choice. This happened for several reasons:
Timing
Postscript arrived as part of the Apple Laserwriter, a perfect
companion to the Macintosh, the system largely responsible for
the desktop publishing revolution of the 80s.
It's device-independent
Postscript programs can be run to generate output on a pixel
screen, a vector screen, a fax machine, or almost any sort of
printer mechanism, without the original program needing to be
changed. Postscript output will look the same on any Postscript
device, at least within the limits of the device's
capabilities. Before the creation of PDF, people exchanged
complex documents online as Postscript files. The only reason
this standard didn't "stick" was because Windows machines
didn't usually include a Postscript previewer, so Adobe
specified hyperlinks and compression for Postscript, called the
result PDF, distributed previewers for it, and invented a
market for their "distiller" tools (the functionality of which
is also provided by ghostscript's ps2pdf and pdf2ps programs).
It's a real programming language
Postscript is a complete programming language; you can write
software to do most anything in it. This is mostly useful for
defining subroutines at the start of your program to reproduce
complex things over and over throughout your document, like a
logo or a big "DRAFT" in the background. But there's no reason
you couldn't compute p in a Postscript program.
It's open
Postscript is fully specified in a publically available series
of books (which you can find at any good bookstore). Although
Adobe invented it and provides the dominant commercial
implementation, other vendors like Aladdin produce
independently coded implementations as well.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. Non-Postscript
Failing the (larger) budget necessary to buy a Postscript printer, you can use any printer supported by Ghostscript, the free Postscript interpreter used in lieu of actual printer Postscript support. Note that most Linux distributions can only ship a somewhat outdated version of Ghostscript due to the license. Fortunately, there is usually a prepackaged up to date Ghostscript made available in each distribution's contrib area.
Adobe now has a new printer language called "PrintGear". I think it's a greatly simplified binary format language with some Postscript heritage but no Postscript compatibility. And I haven't heard of Ghostscript supporting it. But some PrintGear printers seem to support another language like PCL, and these printers will work with Linux (iff the PCL is implemented in the printer and not in a Windows driver).
Similarly, Adobe offers a host-based Postscript implementation called PressReady. This works much like Ghostscript does to provide Postscript support for a non-Postscript printer, but has the disadvantage that it runs only on Windows.
5.3. What printers work?
If you want to buy a printer, you can look in several places to see if it will work. The cooperatively maintained Printing HOWTO printer [114]database aims to be a comprehensive listing of the state of Linux printer support. A summary of it is below; be sure to check online for more details and information on what driver(s) to use.
Ghostscript's [115]printer compatibility page has a list of some working printers, as well as links to other pages.
[116]Dejanews contains hundreds of "it works" and "it doesn't work" testimonials. Try all three, and when you're done, check that your printer is present and correct in the [117]database, so that it will be listed properly in this document in the future.
If you're lazy, I keep a short list of [118]suggested printers on my website. These center around color inkjets and low-cost laser devices; fully compatible mid-range and high-end devices are much easier to find. You can even help support this document and the website by buying from buy.com or outpost.com through me.
5.3.1. Printer compatibility list
This section is a summary of the [119]online database. The online version includes device specifications, notes, driver information, user-maintained documentation, manufacturer web pages, and interface scripts for using drivers with several print spooling systems (including LPR, LPRng, PDQ, and CUPS). The online version of this list is also interactive; people can and do add printers all the time, so be sure to check it as well. Finally, if your printer isn't listed, add it!
Note that this listing is not gospel; people sometimes add incorrect information, which I eventually weed out. Entries I have not sanity-checked are marked with an asterisk (*). Verify from Dejanews that a printer works for someone before buying it based on this list. If you can find no information in Dejanews, mail me and I'll put you in contact with the person who added the printer.
Printers here are categorized into three types:
Perfectly
Perfect printers work perfectly - you can print to the full
ability of the printer, including color, full resolution, etc.
In a few cases printers with undocumented "resolution
enhancement" modes that don't work are listed as perfect;
generally the difference in print quality is small enough that
it isn't worth worrying about.
Mostly
You can print fine, but there may be minor limitations of one
sort or another in either printing or other features.
Partially
You can print, but maybe not in color, or only at a poor
resolution. See the online listing for information on the
limitation.
Paperweight
You can't print a darned thing; typically this will be due to
lack of a driver and/or documentation on how to write one.
Paperweights occasionally get "promoted", either when someone
discovers that an existing driver works, or when someone
creates a new driver, but you shouldn't count on this
happening.
In all cases, since this information is provided by dozens of people, none of it is guaranteed to be correct; entries with an asterisk (*) are particularly suspect. The facts, however, should be easy to corroborate from the driver web pages and manufacturer web sites.
And without further ado, here is the printer compatibility list:
Table 1. Linux Printer Support
Manufacturer
Perfectly
Mostly
Partially
Paperweight
Alps
MD-1000
MD-1300
MD-2000
MD-4000
MD-5000
Apollo
P-1200
Apple
12/640ps
Dot Matrix
ImageWriter
ImageWriter LQ
LaserWriter 16/600*
LaserWriter IINTX*
LaserWriter IIg
LaserWriter Select 360
Color StyleWriter 1500
Color StyleWriter 2200
Color StyleWriter 2400
Color StyleWriter 2500
LaserWriter NT
StyleWriter 1200
StyleWriter I
StyleWriter II
Avery
Personal Label Printer+
Personal Label Printer
Brother
HL-4Ve
HL-8
HL-10V
HL-10h
HL-630
HL-660
HL-720
HL-730
HL-760
HL-820
HL-1020
HL-1040
HL-1070*
HL-1250
HL-1260
HL-1270N
HL-1660e
HL-2060
HJ-400
HL-1050
HL-1060
HL-1240
DCP-1200
HL-1030*
MC-3000
MFC 7150C
MFC-4350
MFC-6550MC
MFC-8300
MFC-9100c
MFC-9500
MFC-9600
4550*
MP-21C
C.Itoh
M8510
CalComp
Artisan 1023 penplotter*
Canon
BJ-5
BJ-10e
BJ-20
BJ-200
BJ-330
BJC-70
BJC-210
BJC-250
BJC-600
BJC-610
BJC-620
BJC-800
BJC-4000
BJC-4100
BJC-4200
BJC-4300*
BJC-4400*
GP 335
GP 405
LBP-4+
LBP-4U
LBP-8A1
LBP-430
LBP-1260
LBP-1760
LIPS-III
BJC-80
BJC-240
BJC-1000*
BJC-2000*
BJC-2100
BJC-3000
BJC-4310SP
BJC-7004*
LBP-4sx
BJ-300
BJC-210SP
BJC-4550
BJC-6000*
BJC-6100
BJC-7000*
BJC-7100*
BJC-8200
MultiPASS C2500*
MultiPASS C3000
MultiPASS C3500*
MultiPASS C5000*
MultiPASS C5500
BJC-5000
BJC-5100
BJC-6500
BJC-8000
LBP-460*
LBP-600
LBP-660*
Multipass L6000*
Citizen
ProJet II*
ProJet IIc
printiva600C
Compaq
IJ300
IJ750
IJ900
DEC
DECWriter 500i*
DECwriter 110i*
DECwriter 520ic*
LA50*
LA75*
LA75 Plus*
LN03*
LN07*
LJ250*
LN17
1800*
Dymo-CoStar
ASCII 250*
ASCII+*
EL40*
EL60*
LabelWriter II*
LabelWriter XL*
LabelWriter XL+*
SE250*
SE250+*
Turbo*
Epson
Action Laser II
ActionLaser 1100*
ActionPrinter 3250
Dot Matrix
L-1000*
LP 8000
LQ-24
LQ-500
LQ-570+
LQ-850
LQ-2550
LX-1050
SQ 1170
Stylus Color
Stylus Color 400
Stylus Color 440
Stylus Color 460
Stylus Color 480
Stylus Color 500
Stylus Color 600
Stylus Color 640
Stylus Color 660
Stylus Color 740
Stylus Color 760
Stylus Color 800
Stylus Color 860
Stylus Color 880
Stylus Color 900
Stylus Color 980
Stylus Color 1160
Stylus Color 1500
Stylus Color 1520
Stylus Color 3000
Stylus Color I
Stylus Color PRO
Stylus Photo
Stylus Photo 700
Stylus Photo 720
Stylus Photo 750
Stylus Photo 870
Stylus Photo 1200
Stylus Photo 1270
Stylus Photo EX
EPL-5700
Stylus Color 300
Stylus Color 670*
Stylus Color 850
Stylus Color II
Stylus Color IIs
Stylus Pro XL
Stylus Photo 2000P
EPL-5700L
Fujitsu
1200*
2400*
3400*
PrintPartner 10V*
PrintPartner 16DV*
PrintPartner 20W*
PrintPartner 8000*
HP
2000C
2500C
Color LaserJet 4500
DesignJet 3500CP
DeskJet
DeskJet 400
DeskJet 420C
DeskJet 500
DeskJet 500C
DeskJet 510
DeskJet 520
DeskJet 540
DeskJet 550C
DeskJet 560C
DeskJet 600
DeskJet 1200C
DeskJet 1600C
DeskJet 1600CM
LaserJet
LaserJet 2 w/PS*
LaserJet 2D
LaserJet 2P
LaserJet 2P Plus
LaserJet 3
LaserJet 3D
LaserJet 3P w/PS
LaserJet 4 Plus
LaserJet 4L
LaserJet 4M
LaserJet 4ML*
LaserJet 4P
LaserJet 5
LaserJet 5L*
LaserJet 5M*
LaserJet 5MP*
LaserJet 5P*
LaserJet 6
LaserJet 6L*
LaserJet 6MP*
LaserJet 1100
LaserJet 2100
LaserJet 2100M
LaserJet 4050N
LaserJet 5000
LaserJet 8000
LaserJet 8100
LaserJet Plus*
LaserJet Series II*
Mopier 240*
Mopier 320*
PaintJet*
PaintJet XL*
PaintJet XL300*
ThinkJet*
Color LaserJet 5
DesignJet 230*
DesignJet 350C
DesignJet 650C*
Designjet 750 C Plus*
DeskJet 310
DeskJet 610C
DeskJet 610CL
DeskJet 612C
DeskJet 660C
DeskJet 670C
DeskJet 672C
DeskJet 682C
DeskJet 690C
DeskJet 692C
DeskJet 694C
DeskJet 697C
DeskJet 710C*
DeskJet 712C
DeskJet 720C*
DeskJet 722C*
DeskJet 810C
DeskJet 812C
DeskJet 815C*
DeskJet 820C
DeskJet 832C
DeskJet 840C
DeskJet 842C*
DeskJet 850C
DeskJet 855C
DeskJet 870C
DeskJet 870Cse*
DeskJet 870Cxi
DeskJet 880C
DeskJet 882C
DeskJet 895C
DeskJet 895Cxi*
DeskJet 932C
DeskJet 950C*
DeskJet 970C
DeskJet 970Cse
DeskJet 1100C
DeskJet 1120C
DeskJet 1220C
LaserJet 2
LaserJet 6P
LaserJet 4000
PSC 500*
Color LaserJet 5000
DeskJet 320
DeskJet 340C
DeskJet 890C
DeskJet 930C
DeskJet 1000C
LaserJet 1100A
OfficeJet 500*
OfficeJet 600*
OfficeJet 625*
OfficeJet 635*
OfficeJet 710*
OfficeJet Pro 1170C*
OfficeJet Pro 1175C*
OfficeJet R45*
OfficeJet R60
PhotoSmart P1000
PhotoSmart P1100*
LaserJet 3100*
LaserJet 3150
Heidelberg
Digimaster 9110*
Hitachi
DDP 70 (with MicroPress)*
IBM
3853 JetPrinter*
4019*
4029 10P*
4303 Network Color Printer*
Execjet 4072*
Page Printer 3112*
ProPrinterII*
Imagen
ImPress*
Infotec
infotec 4651 MF*
Kodak
DigiSource 9110*
IS 70 CPII*
Kyocera
F-3300
FS-600*
FS-600 (KPDL-2)*
FS-680*
FS-800*
FS-1200*
FS-1700+*
FS-1750*
FS-3750*
FS-5900C*
P-2000*
F-800T*
FS-3500*
Lexmark
4039 10plus
Optra Color 40
Optra Color 45
Optra Color 1200
Optra Color 1275
Optra E*
Optra E+*
Optra E310
Optra E312
Optra Ep*
Optra K 1220*
Optra R+*
Optra S 1250*
Optra S 1855*
Optra Se 3455*
Optra W810
Valuewriter 300*
Z32
1020 Business
3000
1000
1100
2030
2070
3200
5000
5700
7000
7200
Winwriter 400*
Z11*
Z51
1020
2050
Winwriter 100*
Winwriter 150c*
Winwriter 200*
Z22
Z52*
Minolta
PagePro 6*
PagePro 6e*
PagePro 6ex*
PagePro 8*
PagePro 8L*
PagePro 6L
Mitsubishi
CP50 Color Printer*
NEC
P2X*
PinWriter P6*
PinWriter P6 plus*
PinWriter P7*
PinWriter P7 plus*
PinWriter P60*
PinWriter P70*
SilentWriter LC 890*
Silentwriter2 S60P*
Silentwriter2 model 290*
SuperScript 660i*
SuperScript 1800
Silentwriter 95f*
SuperScript 100C*
SuperScript 150C*
SuperScript 650C*
SuperScript 750C*
SuperScript 860*
SuperScript 870*
SuperScript 1260*
SuperScript 610plus*
SuperScript 660*
SuperScript 660plus*
Oce
3165*
Okidata
ML 380*
OL 410e
OL 600e*
OL 610e/PS
OL 800
OL 810e/PS
OL400ex
OL810ex
OL820*
OL830Plus
Okipage 6e
Okipage 6ex*
Okipage 8c
Okipage 8p
Okipage 10e
Okipage 12i
Okipage 20DXn
Microline 182
OL 400w*
OL 610e/S
OkiPage 4w+*
OkiPage 8w Lite*
OkiPage 8z*
Okijet 2500*
Okipage 4w*
Okipage 8w*
Super 6e
Microline 192+
Okipage 6w*
Okijet 2010
Olivetti
JP350S*
JP450*
JP470*
PG 306*
PCPI
1030*
Panasonic
KX-P1123*
KX-P1124*
KX-P1150*
KX-P1180i*
KX-P2023*
KX-P2135*
KX-P2150*
KX-P4410*
KX-P4450*
KX-P5400*
KX-P8420*
KX-P8475*
KX-PS600*
kx-p1624*
KX-P2123*
KX-P6150*
KX-P6500*
KX-P6100*
KX-P6300 GDI*
KX-P8410*
Printrex
820 DL*
QMS
2425 Turbo EX*
LPK-100*
magicolor 2+*
ps-810*
magicolor 2
Raven
LP-410
Ricoh
4081*
4801*
6000*
Aficio 220*
Aficio AP2000
Aficio 401*
Aficio Color 2206*
Afico FX10*
Samsung
ML-85*
ML-4600*
ML-5000a*
ML-6000/6100*
ML-7000/7000P/7000N*
ML-7050*
QL-5100A*
QL-6050*
SI-630A*
ML-85G
QL-85G
ML-5050G*
SF/MSYS/MJ-4700/4800/4500C*
Seiko
SpeedJET 200*
SLP*
SLP 120*
SLP 220*
SLP EZ30*
SLP Plus*
SLP Pro*
Sharp
AR-161*
Star
LC24-100*
LS-04
NL-10*
LC 90*
LC24-200*
StarJet 48*
WinType 4000*
Tally
MT908*
Tektronix
3693d color printer, 8-bit mode*
4693d color printer, 2-bit mode*
4693d color printer, 4-bit mode*
4695*
4696*
4697*
Phaser 780
Phaser 850*
Phaser IISX*
Phaser PX*
Xerox
2700 XES
3700 XES
4045 XES*
DocuPrint 4508
DocuPrint C20
DocuPrint C55*
DocuPrint N17
DocuPrint N32*
Document Centre 400*
DocuPrint C6*
DocuPrint P8e
DocuPrint P12*
Docuprint C6*
Docuprint C8*
XJ6C*
Document Homecentre
WorkCentre 450cp*
WorkCentre 470cx*
XJ8C*
DocuPrint P8*
Work Centre XK35c
WorkCenter XE90fx*
WorkCentre XD120f*
WorkCentre XE80
workcentre 385*
This entry has not been sanity-checked by me.
5.4. How to buy a printer
It's a bit difficult to select a printer these days; there are many models to choose from. Here are some shopping tips:
Cost
You get what you pay for. Most printers under $200-300 will
print reasonably well, but printing costs a lot per page. For
some printers, it only takes one or two cartridges to add up to
the cost of a new printer! Similarly, the cheapest printers
won't last very long. The least expensive printers, for
example, have a MTBF of about three months; obviously these are
poorly suited for heavy use.
Inkjets
Inkjet printheads will clog irreparably over time, so the
ability to replace the head somehow is a feature. Inkjet
printheads are expensive, with integrated head/ink cartridges
costing ten times (!) what ink-only cartridges go for, so the
ability to replace the head only when needed is a feature.
Epson Styluses tend to have fixed heads, and HP DeskJets tend
to have heads integrated into the cartridges. Canons have
three-part cartridges with independently replaceable ink tanks;
I like this design. OTOH, the HP cartridges aren't enormously
more expensive, and HP makes a better overall line; Canon is
often the third choice from the print quality standpoint; and
Epson Styluses are the best supported under Linux at the
moment. You just can't win.
Lasers
Laser printers consume a drum and toner, plus a little toner
wiping bar. The cheapest designs include toner and drum
together in a big cartridge; these designs cost the most to
run. The best designs for large volume take plain toner powder
or at least separate toner cartridges and drums.
Photography
The best color photograph output is from continuous tone
printers which use a silver halide plus lasers approach to
produce--surprise!--actual photographs. Since these printers
cost tens of thousands to buy, [120]Ofoto.com offers
inexpensive print-by-print jobs. The results are stunning; even
the best inkjets don't compare.
The best affordable photo prints come from the dye-sublimation
devices like some members of the Alps series (thermal transfer
of dry ink or dye sublimation). Unfortunately they have poor
Linux support (the one report I have speaks of banding and
grainy pictures), and even then it's unclear if the dye-sub
option is supported.
The more common photo-specialized inkjets usually feature 6
color CMYKcm printing or even a 7 color CMYKcmy process. All
photo-specialized printers are expensive to run; either you
always run out of blue and have to replace the whole cartridge,
or the individual color refills for your high-end photo printer
cost an arm and a leg. Special papers cost a bundle, too; you
can expect top-quality photo inkjet output to run over a US
dollar per page. See also the section on printing photographs
later in this document, and the sections on color tuning (such
as it is) in Ghostscript.
Speed
Speed is proportional to processing power, bandwidth, and
generally printer cost. The fastest printers will be networked
Postscript printers with powerful internal processors.
Consumer-grade printers will depend partly on Ghostscript's
rendering speed, which you can affect by having a reasonably
well-powered machine; full pages of color, in particular, can
consume large amounts of host memory. As long as you actually
have that memory, things should work out fine.
Forms
If you want to print on multicopy forms, then you need an
impact printer; many companies still make dot matrix printers,
most of which emulate traditional Epson models and thus work
fine.
Labels
There are two supported lines of label printer; look for the
Dymo-Costar and the Seiko SLP models. Other models may or may
not work. Avery also makes various sizes of stick-on labels in
8.5x11 format that you can run through a regular printer.
Plotting
Big drafting formats are usually supported these days by
monster inkjets; HP is a popular choice. Mid-sized (11x17)
inkjets are also commonly used for smaller prints. Much
plotting of this sort is done with the languages RTL, HP-GL,
and HP-GL/2, all of which are simple HP proprietary vector
languages usually generated directly by application software.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4.1. What do I have?
I own an HP Deskjet 500, a Lexmark Optra 40, and a Canon BJC-4100. All work perfectly: the HP and Canon are older models, well supported by Ghostscript; and the Optra is a more modern color inkjet with full Postscript and PCL 5 support (!).
I also own a Hawking Technology 10/100 Ethernet print server (model 7117, actually made by Zero One Technologies in Taiwan); this makes it possible to put the printer anywhere with power and a network jack, instead of just near a computer. It's a little dongle that attaches to the printer's parallel port and has an Ethernet jack on the other side. The only flaw with this is that it doesn't allow bidirectional communication, so I can't arrange to be sent email when the ink is low.
6. Spooling software
Until recently, the choice for Linux users was simple - everyone ran the same old lpd lifted mostly verbatim out of BSD's Net-2 code. Even today, most vendors ship this software. But this is beginning to change. SVR4-like systems including Sun's Solaris come with a completely different print spooling package, centered around lpsched.
Today, there are a number of good systems to chose from. I describe them all below; read the descriptions and make your own choice. PDQ is the simplest modern system with a GUI; it is suitable for both basic home users and (in a hybrid pdq/lprng setup) people in many larger environments. For business environments with mainly networked Postscript printers, a front-end program like GPR with LPRng is a good alternative; it handles PPD options directly and has a slightly nicer interface. In other cases CUPS is a good option; it too has excellent Postscript printer support, and offers IPP support, a web interface, and a number of other features.
6.1. LPD
LPD, the original BSD Unix Line Printer Daemon, has been the standard on Unix for years. It is available for every style of Unix, and offers a rather minimal feature set derived from the needs of timesharing-era computing. Despite this somewhat peculiar history, it is still useful today as a basic print spooler. To be really useful with modern printer, a good deal of extra work is needed in the form of companion filter scripts and front-end programs. But these exist, and it does all work.
LPD is also the name given to the network printing protocol by [121]RFC 1179. This network protocol is spoken not only by the LPD daemon itself, but by essentially every networked print server, networked printer, and every other print spooler out there; LPD is the least common denominator of standards-based network printing.
LPRng (see [122]Section 6.3) is a far better implementation of the basic LPD design than the regular one; if you must use LPD, consider using LPRng instead. There is far less voodoo involved in making it do what you want, and what voodoo there is is well documented.
There are a large number of LPD sources floating around in the world. Arguably, some strain of BSD Unix is probably the official owner, but everyone implements changes willy-nilly, and they all cross-pollinate in unknown ways, such that it is difficult to say with certainty exactly which LPD you might have. Of the readily available LPDs, VA Linux offers one with a few minor modifications that make the user interface much more flexible. The [123]SourceForge LPD supports command-line option specification with a -o flag; options are then passed through to filters. This is similar to the features offered by a number of traditional Unix vendors, and similar to (although incompatible with) LPRng's -z option mechanism.
6.1.1. LPD front-ends
If you go with LPD, the best way to use it is via a front-end. There are several to chose from; GPR (see [124]Section 3.3) and XPDQ (see [125]Section 6.2) are perhaps the two best. Others exist; tell me about them.
6.2. PDQ
[126]PDQ is a non-daemon-centric print system which has a built-in, and sensible, driver configuration syntax. This includes the ability to declare printing options, and a GUI or command line tool for users to specify these options with; users get a nice dialog box in which to specify resolution, duplexing, paper type, etc (see [127]Figure 7).
Figure 6. XPDQ Main Window
[snapshot-xpdq-main.gif]
Running all of the filters as the user has a number of advantages: the security problems possible from Postscript are mostly gone, multi-file LaTeX jobs can be printed effectively as dvi files, and so forth.
This is what I now use; I've written driver spec files for my printers, and there are several included with the distribution, so there are plenty of examples to base yours on. I've also written a few tools to automate driver spec generation to help the rest of you.
PDQ is not without flaws: most notably it processes the entire job before sending it to the printer. This means that, for large jobs, PDQ may simply be impractical--you can end up with hundreds of megs being copied back and forth on your disk. Even worse, for slow drivers like the better quality inkjet drivers, the job will not start printing until Ghostscript and the driver have finished processing. This may be many minutes after submission.
If you have many users, many printers, or anything else complex going on, I recommend using PDQ as a front-end to LPD-protocol based network printing (you can print via the lpd protocol to the local machine). In most such situations, rather than using the traditional BSD lpd as the back-end, I recommend LPRng:
Figure 7. XPDQ Driver Options Window
[snapshot-xpdq-options.gif]
6.3. LPRng
Some Linux vendors (including Caldera) provide LPRng, a far less ancient LPD print spooling implementation. LPRng is far easier to administer for large installations (read: more than one printer, any serial printers, or any peculiar non-lpd network printers) and has a less frightfully haphazard codebase than does stock lpd. It can even honestly claim to be secure - there are no SUID binaries, and it supports authentication via PGP or Kerberos.
LPRng also includes some example setups for common network printers - HP LaserJets, mainly, that include some accounting abilities. If you'd like more information on LPRng, check out the [128]LPRng Web Page. LPRng uses more or less the same basic filter model as does BSD lpd, so the [129]LPD support offered by my website applies to LPRng as well. This can help you effectively use free software drivers for many printers.
LPRng is distributed under either the GPL or an Artistic license.
6.4. PPR
[130]PPR is a Postscript-centric spooler which includes a rudimentary Postscript parsing ability from which it derives several nice features. It includes good accounting capabilities, good support for Appletalk, SMB, and LPD clients, and much better error handling than lpd. PPR, like every other spooler here, can call Ghostscript to handle non-Postscript printers.
I only recently found out about PPR; I don't know of anyone who has tried it. It was written by, and is in use at, Trinity College. The license is BSD-style; free for all use but credit is due.
According to the documentation, it's somewhat experimental. Malformed Postscript jobs won't print; instead they bounce, and it's up to the user to fix the Postscript. This may make it unsuitable for some environments, although most users generate Postscript with a small handful of well-characterized Postscript generators, so it probably wouldn't be that big an issue.
6.5. CUPS
One interesting newcomer on the scene is [131]CUPS, an implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), an HTTP-like RFC standard replacement protocol for the venerable (and klunky) LPD protocol. The implementation of CUPS has been driven by Michael Sweet of Easy Software Products; CUPS is distributed under the GPL.
I've finally done some work with CUPS, and it does work as advertised. There are a number of very good features in it, including sensible option handling; web, gui, and command-line interfaces; and a mime-based filtering system with strong support for Postscript. Since it is so new, however, it does have a number of quirks, and it is hard to recommend for large or secure installations at this time (as of version 1.1). It is a fine solution, however, for smaller installations or especially larger installatons with trusted users.
Like other systems, CUPS can be used with most existing drivers. Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky to configure an arbitrary driver for use with CUPS--at least if you want all the options to work--so it's best to find a preexisting PPD file and filter script to make your driver go. There are at least four sets of drivers which you can use with CUPS:
[132]CUPS-O-Matic
My web-based CUPS-O-Matic system can generate a suitable PPD
for use with any printer driver that has full details entered
in the Linux Printing Database. The PPD gets used together with
a backend script named cupsomatic. CUPS-O-Matic uses free
software drivers. At the moment I am concentrating on
correctness rather than completeness, so rather few drivers are
in fact supported. This will change over time.
[133]CUPS Drivers and KUPS
The CUPS Drivers project is accumulating PPD files useable with
either Postscript printers or the backend filter ps2gs2raw.
These PPD files use free software drivers. KUPS is a companion
setup program.
Postscript PPDs
CUPS can use vendor-supplied PPD files for Postscript printers
directly. Often these come with the Windows drivers for a
printer, or can be found on the printer vendor's website.
[134]Adobe also distributes PPD files for many Postscript
printers.
ESP Print Pro
[135]Easy Software Products, Inc. sells CUPS bundled with a
collection of proprietary drivers. Although they are not free
software, they do drive many common printers. The bundle is
somewhat expensive measured against the price of a single
supported printer, but it certainly has a place. These drivers
are reputedly not terribly good, but they are somewhat
comprehensive, and even mediocre quality is preferable to a
paperweight.
The third-party program [136]XPP (see [137]Figure 4) offers a very nice graphical interface to the user functionality of CUPS, including an marvelous interface to print-time options (shown in [138]Figure 5). For information on using XPP, see [139]Section 3.3.2.
7. How it all works
In order to get printing working well, you need to understand how your spooling software works. All systems work in essentially the same way, although the exact order might vary a bit, and some systems skip a step or two:
Figure 8. Spooling Illustration
[spool-illustration.gif]
The user submits a job along with his selection of options. The job data is usually, but not always, Postscript.
The spooling system copies the job and the options over the network in the general direction of the printer.
The spooling system waits for the printer to be available.
The spooling system applies the user's selected options to the job, and translates the job data into the printer's native language, which is usually not Postscript. This step is called filtering; most of the work in setting things up lies in getting the proper filtering to happen.
The job is done. The spooling system will usually do assorted cleanup things at this point. If there was an error along the way, the spooler will usually notify the user somehow (for example, by email).
7.1. PDQ
Pdq stands for "Print, Don't Queue", and the way it works reflects this design. The following sequence of events happens when you use PDQ to print:
You run pdq or xpdq, specifying a file.
You specify a printer.
You specify the settings for the various options and arguments defined in the printer's PDQ driver file (duplex, copies, print quality, and so forth).
PDQ analyzes the contents of what you printed, and follows the instructions in the PDQ driver file which tell it how to process your data for this printer with your options.
PDQ sends the processed data to the printer according to the interface defined for that printer (straight to /dev/lp0, or to an LPD daemon on the network, over the network to an Apple or Microsoft system, or even to a fax machine).
If PDQ can't send the data to the printer right away, it spawns a background process to wait and try again until it succeeds or hits a time limit.
At all times during this process, and afterwards, the state of each print job can be seen and inspected using xpdq. Jobs that failed are shown in red and can be resent.
7.2. LPD
Lpd stands for Line Printer Daemon, and refers in different contexts to both the daemon and the whole collection of programs which run print spooling. These are:
[140]lpd
The spooling daemon. One of these runs to control everything on
a machine, AND one is run per printer while the printer is
printing.
[141]lpr
The user spooling command. Lpr contacts lpd and injects a new
print job into the spool.
[142]lpq
Lists the jobs in a print queue.
[143]lpc
The Lpd system control command. With lpc you can stop, start,
reorder, etc, the print queues.
[144]lprm
lprm removes a job from the print spool.
So how does it fit together? The following things happen:
At boot time, lpd is run. It waits for connections and manages printer queues.
A user submits a job with the lpr command or, alternatively, with an lpr front-end like GPR, PDQ, etc. Lpr contacts lpd over the network and submits both the user's data file (containing the print data) and a control file (containing user options).
When the printer becomes available, the main lpd spawns a child lpd to handle the print job.
The child lpd executes the appropriate filter(s) (as specified in the if attribute in /etc/printcap) for this job and sends the resulting data on to the printer.
The lp system was originally designed when most printers were line printers - that is, people mostly printed plain ascii. By placing all sorts of magic in the if filter, modern printing needs can be met with lpd (well, more or less; many other systems do a better job).
There are many programs useful for writing LPD filters. Among them are:
gs
Ghostscript is a host-based Postscript interpreter (aka a
Raster Image Processor or RIP). It accepts Postscript and
produces output in various printer languages or a number of
graphics formats. Ghostscript is covered in [145]Section 10.
ppdfilt
[146]ppdfilt is a standalone version of a CUPS component. It
filters Postscript, executing a few basic transformations on it
(n-up printing, multiple copies, etc) and adding in user option
statements according to a Postscript Printer Definition (PPD)
file usually included with Postscript printers.
ppdfilt is best used together with an option-accepting LPD
system (like the VA Linux LPD, or LPRng) and a filter script
which parses user-provided options into the equivalent ppdfilt
command. VA Linux and HP provide a modified rhs-printfilters
package which does exactly this; it produces nice results if
you have a Postscript printer. See [147]Section 8.2.2 for
information on this system.
ps2ps
ps2ps is a utility script included with Ghostscript. It filters
Postscript into more streamlined Postscript, possibly at a
lower Language Level. This is useful if you have an older
Postscript printer; most modern software produces modern
Postscript.
mpage
mpage is a utility which accepts text or Postscript, and
generates n-up output--that is, output with several page images
on each piece of paper. There are actually several programs
which do this, including enscript, nenscript, and a2ps.
a2ps
a2ps, aka any-to-ps, is a program which accepts a variety of
file types and converts them to Postscript for printing.
_________________________________________________________________
8. How to set things up
For common configurations, you can probably ignore this section entirely - instead, you should jump straight to [148]Section 9 below, or better yet, your vendor's documentation. Most Linux distributions supply one or more "idiot-proof" tools to do everything described here for common printers.
If your vendor's tool doesn't work out for you, or you'd like the ability to interactively control printing options when you print, then you should use some other system. PDQ is a good choice; it provides very good functionality and is easy to setup. APS Filter is another good system; it configures LPD queues and filters very easily on most any sort of Unix system.
You can also use the printing system interfaces from the [149]Linux Printing Website to connect many free drivers into several spooling systems. Once this project is complete, these interfaces will offer the best functionality: all styles of free software drivers are supported, user-settable options are available, and most common spooling systems are supported.
8.1. Configuring PDQ
PDQ can be configured by either the superuser or by a joeuser. Root's changes are made to /etc/printrc, and affect everyone, while joeuser can only modify his personal .printrc. Everything applies to both types of configuration.
If PDQ is not available prepackaged for your distribution, you should obtain the source distribution from the [150]PDQ web page and compile it yourself. It is an easy compile, but you must first be sure to have installed the various GTK development library packages, the C library development package, the gcc compiler, make, and possibly a few other development things.
8.1.1. Drivers and Interfaces
PDQ lets users select a printer to print to. A printer is defined in PDQ as the combination of a "driver" and an "interface". Both drivers and interfaces are, in fact, merely snippets of text in the PDQ configuration file.
A PDQ interface says everything about how to ship data out to a printer. The most common interfaces, which are predefined in the PDQ distribution's example printrc file, are:
local-port
A local port interface speaks to a parallel or serial port on
the machine PDQ is running on. Using this interface, PDQ can
print directly to your parallel port. Note that if you have a
multiuser system this can cause confusion, and if you have a
network the local-port interface will only apply to one system.
In those cases, you can define a raw unfiltered lpd queue for
the port and print to the system's lpd daemon exactly the same
way from all systems and accounts without any troubles. This
interface has a device name argument; the typical value would
be /dev/lp0.
bsd-lpd
A bsd lpd interface speaks over the network to an LPD daemon or
LPD-speaking networked printer. PDQ supports job submission,
cancellation, and queries to LPD interfaces. This interface has
hostname and queuename arguments.
appletalk
The appletalk interface allows you to print to printers over
the Appletalk network; if you have a printer plugged into your
Mac this is the way to go. This interface needs to have the
Netatalk package installed to work.
A PDQ driver says everything about how to massage print data into a format that a particular printer can handle. For Postscript printers, this will include conversion from ascii into Postscript; for non-Postscript printers this will include conversion from Postscript into the printer's language with Ghostscript.
If one of PDQ's included driver specifications doesn't fit your printer, then read the section below on how to write your own.
8.1.2. Defining Printers
To define a printer in PDQ:
First check that you've got suitable driver and interface declarations in the system or your personal printrc.
If you want to define the printer in /etc/printrc (for all users), then su to root.
Run xpdq, and select Printer->Add printer. This "wizard" will walk you through the selection of a driver and interface.
That's really all there is to it; most of the work lies in finding or creating a suitable driver specification if you can't find one premade.
8.1.3. Creating a PDQ Driver Declaration
Here I'll walk through an example of how to make a PDQ driver declaration. Before you try that, though, there are several places to look for existing driver specs:
PDQ itself comes with a collection of prewritten driver files.
The Linux Printing Website's [151]database includes a program called "[152]PDQ-O-Matic" which will generate a PDQ specification from the information in the database. Assuming that the database contains the proper information for your printer and driver, this is the best path if you have a non-Postscript printer.
I've written a tool called [153]ppdtopdq which takes a Postscript Printer Definition file and converts it into a PDQ driver specification, with about 75% success. This is an option if you have a Postscript printer.
There are several places to look for the information needed to write your own PDQ driver:
The PDQ driver specification syntax is quite rich, and is fully documented in the [154]printrc(5) man page.
The PDQ distribution includes a few example files. Look in particular at the Epson Stylus file, which demonstrates the structure of the definition for a Ghostscript-driven printer.
The [155]Printing HOWTO Database includes raw Linux driver information for over 600 printers. This will tell you what options to give Ghostscript, or what extra program to run on the Ghostscript output.
If you have to create your own driver specification, or if you enhance one from the PDQ distribution or one of the PDQ driver generator programs mentioned above, please share your creation with the world! Send it to me (gtaylor+pht@picante.com), and I'll make sure that it gets found by future PDQ users with your type of printer.
Now, let's walk through the writing of a driver specification for a printer listed in the Printing HOWTO's database as working, but for which you can't find a PDQ driver spec. I'll use the Canon BJC-210 as the example printer.
First, we look at the [156]database entry for this printer. Note that it is supported "perfectly", so we can expect to get comparable results (or better) to Windows users. The important information is in two places in the entry:
Notes
The human-readable notes will often contain useful information.
For some printers, there is a More Info link, which usually
refers to a web page run by a user with this printer, or to the
driver's home page.
Driver List
Most printers have a list of drivers that are known to work.
This is the most important part. You can follow the driver
links to a driver-specific page, which will often have more
information about how to execute the driver, as well as a link
to the driver's web page, if it has one.
A PDQ driver spec has two logical functions: user interaction, and print job processing. These are represented in the file in three places:
Option Declarations
These define what options the user can set, and declare PDQ
variables for later parts of the driver to use.
Language Filters
These process the print job from whatever format it arrived in
(typically Postscript or ASCII) into a language the printer can
understand (for example, PCL). Option values are available
here, as well as in the output filter.
Output Filter
This final filter bundles up the printer data regardless of
input type; often printer options are set here.
Let's work on each of these for a Canon BJC-210:
8.1.3.1. Options
The driver list for this printer includes the bj200 and bjc600 drivers, both of which are Ghostscript style drivers. The notes suggest that we use the bj200 for black-and-white printing.
So, as far as the user is concerned, the BJC-210 supports one useful option: the user should pick color or black-and-white. Let's declare that as choice option called "MODE": option {
var = "MODE"
desc = "Print Mode"
# default_choice "Color" # uncomment to default to color choice "BW" {
# The value part assigns to the variable MODE whatever you # want. Here we'll assign the text that varies between the # two Ghostscript option sets for the two modes. value = "bj200"
help = "Fast black printing with the black cartridge." desc = "Black-only"
}
choice "Color" {
value = "bjc600"
help = "Full-color printing."
desc = "Color"
}
}
With the above choice declarations, the user will see a Color or BW choice in the driver options dialog when he prints from xpdq. In the command-line pdq tool, he may specify -oBW or -oColor. The default can be set from xpdq, or declared above with the default_choice keyword.
8.1.3.2. Language Filtering
PDQ normally identifies its input with the file(1) command. For each type returned by file that you want to handle, you provide a language_driver clause. The clause consists mostly of a script to process the printjob language, in any (!) scripting language you wish (the default is the usual Bourne shell).
In our case, we want to print Postscript and ASCII on our BJC-210. This needs two language drivers: one to run Ghostscript for Postscript jobs, and one to add carriage returns to ASCII jobs: # The first language_driver in the file that matches what file(1) # says is what gets used.
language_driver ps {
# file(1) returns "PostScript document text conforming at..." filetype_regx = "postscript"
convert_exec = {
gs -sDEVICE=$MODE -r360x360 \ # gs options from the database
-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER \ # the "usual" Ghostscript options
-sOutputFile=$OUTPUT $INPUT # process INPUT into file OUTPUT
# Those last two lines will often be the same for gs-supported # printers. The gs... line, however, will be different for each # printer.
}
}
# We declare text after postscript, because the command "file" will # often describe a postscript file as text (which it is). language_driver text {
# No filetype_regx; we match the driver's name: "text" convert_exec = {#!/usr/bin/perl
# a Perl program, just because we can!
my ($in, $out) = ($ENV{'INPUT'}, $ENV{'OUTPUT'});
open INPUT, "$in";
open OUTPUT, ">$out";
while(<INPUT>) {
chomp;
print OUTPUT, "$_\r\n";
}
}
}
That's it! While other printers may need output filtering (as described in the next section), the above clauses are it for the BJC-210. We just wrap them all up in a named driver clause: driver canon-bjc210-0.1 {
option {
var = "MODE"
desc = "Print Mode"
# default_choice "Color" # uncomment to default to color choice "BW" {
# The value part assigns to the variable MODE whatever you
# want. Here we'll assign the text that varies between the
# two Ghostscript option sets for the two modes.
value = "bj200"
help = "Fast black printing with the black cartridge."
desc = "Black-only"
}
choice "Color" {
value = "bjc600"
help = "Full-color printing."
desc = "Color"
}
}
# The first language_driver in the file that matches what file(1) # says is what gets used.
language_driver ps {
# file(1) returns "PostScript document text conforming at..." filetype_regx = "postscript"
convert_exec = {
gs -sDEVICE=$MODE -r360x360 \ # gs options from the database
-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER \ # the "usual" Ghostscript options
-sOutputFile=$OUTPUT $INPUT # process INPUT into file OUTPUT
# Those last two lines will often be the same for gs-supported
# printers. The gs... line, however, will be different for each
# printer.
}
}
# We declare text after postscript, because the command "file" will # often describe a postscript file as text (which it is). language_driver text {
# No filetype_regx; we match the driver's name: "text" convert_exec = {#!/usr/bin/perl
# a Perl program, just because we can!
my ($in, $out) = ($ENV{'INPUT'}, $ENV{'OUTPUT'});
open INPUT, "$in";
open OUTPUT, ">$out";
while(<INPUT>) {
chomp;
print OUTPUT, "$_\r\n";
}
}
}
}
8.1.3.3. Output Filtering
If you want to prepend or append something to all printjobs, or do some sort of transformation on all the data of all types, then it belongs in the filter_exec clause. Our little Canon doesn't require such a clause, but just to have an example, here's a simple illustration showing how to support duplexing and resolution choice on a Laserjet or clone that speaks PJL: driver generic-ljet4-with-duplex-0.1 {
# First, two option clauses for the user-selectable things: option {
var = "DUPLEX_MODE"
desc = "Duplex Mode"
default_choice = "SIMPLEX"
choice "SIMPLEX" {
value = "OFF"
desc = "One-sided prints"
}
choice "DUPLEX" {
value = "ON"
desc = "Two-sided prints"
}
}
option {
var = "GS_RES"
desc = "Resolution"
default_choice = "DPI600"
choice "DPI300" {
value = "-r300x300"
desc = "300 dpi"
}
choice "DPI600" {
value = "-r600x600"
desc = "600 dpi"
}
}
# Now, we handle Postscript input with Ghostscript's ljet4 driver: language_driver ps {
filetype_regx = "postscript"
convert_exec = {
gs -sDEVICE=ljet4 $GS_RES \
-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER \
-sOutputFile=$OUTPUT $INPUT
}
}
# Finally, we wrap the job in PJL commands: filter_exec {
# requires echo with escape code ability... echo -ne '\33%-12345X' > $OUTPUT
echo "@PJL SET DUPLEX=$DUPLEX_MODE" >> $OUTPUT # You can add additional @PJL commands like the above line here. # Be sure to always append (>>) to the output file!
cat $INPUT >> $OUTPUT
echo -ne '\33%-12345X' >> $OUTPUT
}
}
8.2. Configuring LPD
Most Linux systems ship with LPD. This section describes a very basic setup for LPD; further sections detail the creation of complex filters and network configuration.
8.2.1. Basic LPD configuration
The minimal setup for lpd results in a system that can queue files and print them. It will not pay any attention to wether or not your printer will understand them, and will probably not let you produce attractive output. But we have to start somewhere.
To add a print queue to lpd, you must add an entry in /etc/printcap, and make the new spool directory under /var/spool/lpd.
An entry in /etc/printcap looks like: # LOCAL djet500
lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=/dev/lp0:\
:sh:
This defines a spool called lp, dj, or deskjet, spooled in the directory /var/spool/lpd/dj, with no per-job maximum size limit, which prints to the device /dev/lp0, and which does not have a banner page (with the name of the person who printed, etc) added to the front of the print job.
Go now and read the man page for [157]printcap.
The above looks very simple, but there a catch - unless I send in files a DeskJet 500 can understand, this DeskJet will print strange things. For example, sending an ordinary Unix text file to a deskjet results in literally interpreted newlines, and gets me: This is line one.
This is line two.
This is line three.
ad nauseam. Printing a PostScript file to this spool would get a beautiful listing of the PostScript commands, printed out with this "staircase effect", but no useful output.
Clearly more is needed, and this is the purpose of filtering. The more observant of you who read the printcap man page might have noticed the spool attributes if and of. Well, if, or the input filter, is just what we need here.
If we write a small shell script called filter that adds carriage returns before newlines, the staircasing can be eliminated. So we have to add in an if line to our printcap entry above: lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=/dev/lp0:\
:if=/var/spool/lpd/dj/filter:\
:sh:
A simple filter script might be:
#!perl
# The above line should really have the whole path to perl # This script must be executable: chmod 755 filter while(<STDIN>){chomp $_; print "$_\r\n";}; # You might also want to end with a form feed: print "\f";
If we were to do the above, we'd have a spool to which we could print regular Unix text files and get meaningful results. (Yes, there are four million better ways to write this filter, but few so illustrative. You are encouraged to do this more efficiently.)
The only remaining problem is that printing plain text is really not too hot - surely it would be better to be able to print PostScript and other formatted or graphic types of output. Well, yes, it would, and it's easy to do. The method is simply an extention of the above linefeed-fixing filter.
Such a filter is called a magic filter. It plays the same role as the language filters of PDQ. Don't bother writing one yourself unless you print strange things - there are a good many written for you already, and most have easy-to-use interactive configuration tools. You should simply select a suitable pre-written filter:
LPD-O-Matic
[158]Lpdomatic is a filter designed to use data from the Linux
Printing printer database. It will soon support essentially all
free software printer drivers, including regular Ghostscript
drivers, Uniprint drivers, and the assorted filter programs
floating around out there. It works with various strains of
LPD, including stock BSD, LPRng, and the new VA Linux LPD, to
allow option selection.
APS Filter
[159]apsfilter is a filter designed for use on a wide variety
of Unices. It supports essentially all Ghostscript drivers. It,
too, works with various strains of LPD, including stock BSD and
LPRng. At the moment, this is probably the best third-party
system around for non-PostScript printers.
RHS-Printfilters
RHS-Printfilters is a filter system constructed by Red Hat. It
shipped beginning, I think, in version 4 of Red Hat Linux, as
the backend to the easy-to-use printtool GUI printer
configuration tool. Other distributions, including Debian, now
ship the rhs-printfilters/printool combo as a printing option.
Thus this filter system is arguably the most widely deployed
one.
The rhs filter system is built on an ascii database listing
distributed with it. This listing supports many Ghostscript and
Uniprint drivers, but not filter-style drivers. The filters
constructed also do not support much in the way of
user-controllable options at print time.
The printtool places a configuration file named postscript.cfg
in the spool directory. Inside this Bourne shell-style file,
each setting is a variable. In unusual cases, you can make
useful changes directly to the config file which the printtool
won't allow; typically this would be the specification of an
unusual Ghostscript driver, or a PPD filename for the VA
rhs-printfilters version.
VA Linux has made some enhancements to the rhs-printfilters
system under contract from HP. With the proper versions, it is
now possible to select options for Postscript printers under
control of Adobe PPD files. I cover this system in [160]Section
8.2.2.
There's one catch to such filters: older version of lpd don't run the if filter for remote printers, while most newer ones do (although often with no arguments). The version of LPD shipped with modern Linux and FreeBSD distributions does; most commercial unices that still ship LPD have a version that does not. See the section on network printing later in this document for more information on this. If you only have locally-connected printers, then this won't affect you.
8.2.2. LPD for PostScript Printers
While most versions of LPD don't gracefully handle PostScript (nevermind user options), VA Linux recently modified LPD and Red Hat's filtering software to support PostScript printers fairly well. For the moment, this system works only with Red Hat 6.2, although the packages could be easily adapted for other distributions.
8.2.2.1. How it works
VA's new system uses Postscript Printer Definition, or PPD, files. PPD files are provided by printer manufacturers and declare the available options on a printer, along with the Postscript code needed to activate them. With the VA system, the normal LPD scheme works a little differently:
The user can specify options with the -o flag. For example, you might specify -o MediaType:Transparency if you were about to print on overhead film. Alternatively, the front-end [161]GPR can be used to specify options in a dialog box; you can see screenshots of GPR in [162]Section 3.3.1.
LPR passes the options to LPD as an extended attribute in the LPD control file.
A modified version of the rhs-printfilters package is given the extended options data in an environment variable, and uses ppdfilt to add these options to the print data.
8.2.2.2. Obtaining and Installing
You can obtain RPM packages, or source tarballs, from the project's [163]website on SourceForge. For installation details, consult the project's [164]installation micro-HOWTO. In essence, you need to uninstall the Red Hat version of printtool, lpd, and rhs-printfilters entirely, and then install the VA versions, plus ppdfilt, gpr, and a few other utilities.
You will also need PPD files for your Postscript printers. PPD files are usually fairly easy to find. VA Linux and HP distribute PPD files for many Laserjet models. Other vendors provide PPDs for their own printers, and Adobe distributes [165]PPD files for many printers.
At the moment, much of this is a bit difficult to install. But future installation tools will build upon the printer configuration library libprinterconf, which enables both the autodetection and rhs-printfilter configuration of both networked and local printers.
Note: It is possible to use GPR alone, without the modified LPD or
even rhs-printfilters. GPR can be compiled with all the logic
needed to massage Postscript jobs directly. This may be an
easier-to-install option suitable for people who never really need
to print using lpr directly.
_________________________________________________________________
8.2.2.3. Controlling Postscript Options
Once you've setup VA's Postscript-capable LPD system, you can control your printer's options in two ways:
With the GUI
To use GPR, you first make sure that you've specified the
proper PPD file. Then the printer's options will be available
on the `Advanced' panel. Basic ppdfilt options will be
available on the `Common' panel.
With the command line
This lpr supports the -o option. You may specify any
option/value pair from your printer's PPD file with -o. For
example, consider this PPD file option clause:
*OpenUI *PrintQuality/Print Quality: PickOne *DefaultPrintQuality: None
*OrderDependency: 150 AnySetup *PrintQuality *PrintQuality None/Printer Setting: ""
*PrintQuality Quick/QuickPrint: "<< /DeviceRenderingInfo ... *PrintQuality Normal/Normal: "<< /DeviceRenderingInfo << /... *PrintQuality Pres/Presentation: "<< /DeviceRenderingInfo ... *PrintQuality Image/1200 Image Quality: "<< /DeviceRenderi... *CloseUI: *PrintQuality
For the option PrintQuality, the possible values are Quick,
Normal, Pres, or Image. You might give a command like:
% lpr -o PrintQuality:Image file.ps
There are a number of options common to all printers which will
work in addition to the ones from your PPD. These include:
page-ranges
You can specify a range of pages to print. For example,
page-ranges:2-3.
page-set
You can print only odd or even pages. For example,
page-set:odd.
number-up
You can print multiple pages on each piece of paper. For
example, number-up:2.
Other options are detailed in the ppdfilt man page.
_________________________________________________________________
8.2.3. File Permissions
By popular demand, I include below a listing of the permissions on interesting files on my system. There are a number of better ways to do this, ideally using only SGID binaries and not making everything SUID root, but this is how my system came out of the box, and it works for me. (Quite frankly, if your vendor can't even ship a working lpd you're in for a rough ride).
-r-sr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/bin/lpr*
-r-sr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/bin/lprm*
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root /usr/sbin/lpd*
-r-xr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/sbin/lpc*
drwxrwxr-x 4 root lp /var/spool/lpd/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root lp /var/spool/lpd/lp/
Lpd must currently be run as root so that it can bind to the low-numbered lp service port. It should probably become UID lp.lp or something after binding, but I don't think it does. This is simply one more reason to avoid the stock BSD LPD.
PDQ uses a different, non-daemon-centric scheme, so it has different programs. The only SUID root programs are the lpd interface programs lpd_cancel, lpd_print, and lpd_status; these are SUID because actual Unix print servers require print requests to originate from a priviledged port. If the only printers for which you use PDQ's bsd-lpd interface are networked print servers (like the HP JetDirect or Lexmark's MarkNet adapters) then you do not need the SUID bit on these programs.
8.3. Large Installations
Large installations, by which I mean networks including more than two printers or hosts, have special needs. Below are some tips. For really large environments, merely distributing printcap/filter information becomes a difficult problem; the [166]Cisco Enterprise Print System addresses this and is probably either a good starting point or a nearly complete solution, depending on your needs. Medium to large environments can be well supported by native LPRng features.
Each printer should have a single point of control, where an administrator can pause, reorder, or redirect the queue. To implement this, have everyone printing to a local server, which will then queue jobs and direct them to the proper printer. For large campuses or distributed networks, have one server per building or other suitable network subset.
Use LPRng, at least on servers; the BSD LPD is too buggy for "real" use. So is CUPS, at least right now in mid-2000. But don't take my word for it--you should test a number of spoolers and see which suits you best.
Client systems should not have unique printing configurations. To implement this, use LPRng's extended printcap syntax so that you have one printcap to use everywhere. CEPS provides for this by building atop a lightweight distributed database instead of traditional printcap files.
Print queues should not be named for make or model; name print queues for something sensible like location (floor2_nw) or capability (color_transparency). Three years from now, when a printer breaks, you will be able to replace it with a different make or model without causing confusion.
Operate a web page which shows detailed information on each printer, including location, capabilities, etc. Consider having it show the queue and include a button to remove jobs from the queue. Complex networked environments are unmanagable for users without proper documentation.
On Unix systems, use PDQ or the like to allow selection of print job attributes such as duplex or paper size, and to force users to run all Ghostscript processing under the proper user ID. If you have all Postscript printers (as is best), you can also select from the GPR or XPP front-ends; both are prettier.
On Windows and Apple systems, use either the platform-specific drivers everywhere (Samba supports the Windows automagical driver-download mechanism) or, better, use generic Postscript drivers everywhere. Do not mix and match; primitive word processors often produce different output when the installed printer driver changes; users cannot deal with output that vaires depending on the particular client/printer pair.
If at all possible, buy a large-volume printer for large-volume printing. If on a budget, use LPRng's multiple printers/one queue facility and assign a babysitter; printers are complex mechanical devices that will often jam and run out of paper in such configurations.
Do not feel that printers must be plugged into workstations; Ethernet "print servers" now cost under $100. The ability to locate printers anywhere you can network is a big improvement over forced location near a host; locate printers in sensible, central locations.
Use any SNMP trap or other monitoring/alert facility available to you - someone should be tasked with running around and fixing printers with no ink or paper. Npadmin (see [167]Section 11.10.1) can be used to do some management operations with SNMP printers.
8.4. Accounting
Regular LPD provides very little to help you with accounting. You can specify the name of an accounting file in the af printcap attribute, but this is merely passed as an argument to your if filter. It's up to you to make your if filter write entries to the accounting file, and up to you to process the accounting file later (the traditional format is mainly useful for line printers, and is nontrivial to parse in Perl, so there's no reason to preserve it). Also, if you're using my lpdomatic program as your filter, you'll need to make changes, since it depends on being given a configuration file as the ``accounting'' file name.
Ghostscript provides a PageCount operator that you can use to count the number of pages in each job; basically you just tack a few lines of postscript onto the end of the job to write an accounting file entry; for the best example of this see the file unix-lpr.sh in the Ghostscript source distribution.
Note that the unix-lpr implementation of accounting writes to a file from the Ghostscript interpreter, and is thus incompatible with the recommended -dSAFER option. A better solution might be to query the printer with a PJL command after each job, or to write a postscript snippet that prints the pagecount on stdout, where it can be captured without having to write to a file.
The LPRng print spooler includes an HP-specific sample implementation of accounting; I assume that it queries the printer with PJL. This technique should work for most PJL, Postscript, or SNMP printers with which you have two-way communications.
If you have a networked printer that supports SNMP, you can use the npadmin program to query a pagecount after each job. This should work properly for all print jobs. See [168]Section 11.10.1 for more information on npadmin.
9. Vendor Solutions
This section is, by definition, incomplete. Feel free to send in details of your favourite distribution. At the moment, I am aware of no distribution that supports, or even provides, the software I recommend: PDQ.
There are a number of third-party packages out there designed to make printer configuration under Unix easy. These are covered in [169]Section 8; see the subsection there for your particular spooling software for pointers.
9.1. Red Hat
Red Hat has a GUI printer administration tool called printtool which can add remote printers and printers on local devices. It lets you choose a ghostscript-supported printer type and Unix device file to print to, then installs a print queue in /etc/printcap and uses a filter program from the rhs-printfilters package to support postscript and other common input types. This solution works fairly well, and is trivial to setup for common cases.
Where Red Hat fails is when you have a printer which isn't supported by their standard Ghostscript (which is GNU rather than Aladdin Ghostscript, and which supports fewer printers). Check in the printer compatibility list above (or [170]online) if you find that you can't print properly with the stock Red Hat software. If your printer isn't supported by Red Hat's tools, you may need to install a contributed verison of Aladdin Ghostscript, and will probably also be better off if you use the lpdomatic or apsfilter packages, which know all about the printers supported by late-model Ghostscripts, and others besides.
In future versions of Red Hat the printtool will be reimplemented to support a larger list of printers and with the intent to support an eventual rhs-printfilters replacement (the current filter has difficulty with many common printers like some non-PCL DeskJets and most Lexmarks). Some VA Linux-developed PPD features may be incorporated, as well.
9.2. Debian
Debian offers a choice between plain LPD, LPRng, or CUPS; LPRng or CUPS are probably the better choices. I believe Debian also offers a choice of printer configuration tools; apsfilter version 5 or later is probably your best bet, since that verison adds support for LPRng and Ghostscript's uniprint driver scheme. Red Hat's printtool is also supported, for those who like GUI administration tools.
9.3. SuSE
The printing system on SuSE Linux is based on apsfilter, with some enhancements; SuSE's apsfilter will recognize all common file formats (including HTML, if html2ps is installed). There are two ways to setup printers on SuSE systems:
YaST will let you configure "PostScript", "DeskJet" and "Other printers", supported by Ghostscript drivers; it's also possible to setup HP's GDI printers (DeskJet 710/720, 820, 1000, via the "ppa" package). YaST will provide /etc/printcap entries for every printer ("raw", "ascii", "auto" and "color", if the printer to configure is a color printer). YaST will create spool directories and it will arrange apsfilterrc files, where you're able to fine tune some settings (Ghostscript preloads, paper size, paper orientation, resolution, printer escape sequences, etc.). With YaST it's also possible to setup network printers (TCP/IP, Samba, or Novell Netware Printer).
In addition SuSE includes the regular SETUP program from the original apsfilter package (with some enhancements); run lprsetup to invoke this configuration script. Once you get accustomed to its GUI, you'll be able to configure local and network printers.
The SuSE installation manual explains both of these setup procedures.
Wolf Rogner reported some difficulties with SuSE. Apparently the following bugs may bite:
Apsfilter's regular SETUP script is a bit broken, as are the KDE setup tools. Use YaST. [ Ed: does this still apply? It's been some time sice Wolf's report. ]
For networked printers that need to be fed from Ghostscript, you'll need to first uncomment the line REMOTE_PRINTER="remote" in /etc/apsfilterrc. Then run YaST to configure the printer and, under Network configurations, set up a remote printer queue.
YaST's setup doesn't allow color laser printers, so configure a mono printer and then change mono to color everwhere in the printcap entry. You may have to rename the spool directory, too.
9.4. Caldera
Caldera ships LPRng. I have no idea what sort of setup tools they offer.
9.5. Corel
Corel is Debian-based, so all the Debian facts above should still apply. In addition, they've written their own setup tool, based on the sysAPS library which in turn uses my database. They've certainly done so as part of WordPerfect.
Corel operates a printing support newsgroup named [171]corelsupport.linux.printing. The bulk of the traffic appears to be WordPerfect and Corel Linux related.
9.6. Mandrake
As of version 7.2b1, Mandrake ships with CUPS standard. The program QtCUPS is used to provide a clean GUI administration interface. Till went to some trouble to include as many drivers as possible, and they ship CUPS PPD files build with my own [172]foomatic interface code.
I think Earlier Mandrake versions shipped with the Red Hat printtool.
9.7. Other Distributions
Please send me info on what other distributions do!
10. Ghostscript.
[173]Ghostscript is an incredibly significant program for Linux printing. Most printing software under Unix generates PostScript, which is typically a $100 option on a printer. Ghostscript, however, is free, and will generate the language of your printer from PostScript. When tied in with your PDQ printer driver declaration or lpd input filter, it gives you a virtual PostScript printer and simplifies life immensely.
Ghostscript is available in two forms. The commercial version of Ghostscript, called Aladdin Ghostscript, may be used freely for personal use but may not be distributed by commercial entities. It is generally a year or so ahead of the free Ghostscript; at the moment, for example, it supports many color inkjets that the older Ghostscripts do not and has rather better PDF support.
The free version of Ghostscript is GNU Ghostscript, and is simply an aged version of Aladdin ghostscript. This somewhat awkward arrangement has allowed Aladdin to be a totally self-funded free software project; the leading edge versions are done by L Peter and a few employees, and are licensed to hardware and software vendors for use in commercial products. Unfortunately, while this scheme has provided for L Peter's continued work on Ghostscript for years, it has also inhibited the participation of the wider free software community. Driver authors, in particular, find the arrangement poor. L Peter's retirement plans mandate a larger community involvement in the project, so he is considering license changes, and has established a SourceForge project.
Whatever you do with [174]gs, be very sure to run it with the option for disabling file access (-dSAFER). PostScript is a fully functional language, and a bad PostScript program could give you quite a headache.
Speaking of PDF, Adobe's Portable Document Format (at least through 1.3) is actually little more than organized PostScript in a compressed file. Ghostscript can handle PDF input just as it does PostScript. So you can be the first on your block with a PDF-capable printer.
10.1. Invoking Ghostscript
Typically, Ghostscript will be run by whatever filter you settle upon (I recommend apsfilter or my own lpdomatic if your vendor didn't supply anything that suits you), but for debugging purposes it is often handy to run it directly.
gs -help will give a brief listing of options and available drivers (note that this list is the list of drivers compiled in, not the master list of all available drivers).
You might run gs for testing purposes like: `gs <options> -q -dSAFER -sOutputFile=/dev/lp1 test.ps'.
10.2. Ghostscript output tuning
There are a number of things one can do if Ghostscript's output is not satisfactory (actually, you can do anything you darn well please, since you have the source).
Some of these options, and others are described in the Ghostscript User Guide (the file [175]Use.htm in the Ghostscript distribution; possibly installed under /usr/doc or /usr/share/doc on your system) are all excellent candidates for driver options in your filter system or PDQ driver declaration.
10.2.1. Output location and size
The location, size, and aspect ratio of the image on a page is controlled by the printer-specific driver in ghostscript. If you find that your pages are coming out scrunched too short, or too long, or too big by a factor of two, you might want to look in your driver's source module and adjust whatever parameters jump out at you. Unfortunately, each driver is different, so I can't really tell you what to adjust, but most of them are reasonably well commented.
10.2.2. Gamma, dotsizes, etc.
Most non-laser printers suffer from the fact that their dots are rather large. This results in pictures coming out too dark. If you experience this problem with an otherwise untunable driver, you could use your own transfer function. Simply create the following file in the ghostscript lib-dir and add its name to the gs call just before the actual file. You may need to tweak the actual values to fit your printer. Lower values result in a brighter print. Especially if your driver uses a Floyd-Steinberg algorithm to rasterize colors, lower values ( 0.2 - 0.15 ) are probably a good choice.
%!
%transfer functions for cyan magenta yellow black {0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} setcolortransfer
It is also possible to mend printers that have some kind of color fault by tweaking these values. If you do that kind of thing, I recommend using the file colorcir.ps, that comes with ghostscript (in the examples/ subdirectory), as a test page.
For many of the newer color inkjet drivers, there are command-line options, or different upp driver files, which implement gamma and other changes to adapt the printer to different paper types. You sould look into this before playing with Postscript to fix things.
10.2.3. Color Printing in Ghostscript
Ghostscript's default color dithering is optimized for low-resolution devices. It will dither rather coarsely in an attempt to produce 60ppi output (not dpi, ppi - the "apparent" color pixels per inch you get after dithering). This produces rather poor output on modern color printers; inkjets with photo paper, in particular, are capable of mich finer ppi settings.
To adjust this, use the Ghostscript option -dDITHERPPI=x, where x is the value to use. This may or may not have an effect with all drivers; many newer drivers (the Epson Stylus stp driver, for example) implement their own dithering and pay no attention to this setting. Some drivers can use either the regular Ghostscript or driver-specific dithering (the Canon Bubblejet bjc600 driver, for example).
Ghostscript's dithering is in fact rather rudimentary. Many things needed for good output on modern printers are simply not available in the Ghostscript core. Various projects to fix this situation--and the free software world does have the software to do so ready and waiting--are hampered by Ghostscript's licensing situation and the resulting "cathedral" development style. Beginning at the [176]Open Source Printing Summit 2000, however, all the necessary people are talking, so you can expect this situation to improve shortly.
11. Networks
One of the features of most spoolers is that they support printing over the network to printers physically connected to a different machine, or to the network directly. With the careful combination of filter scripts and assorted utilities, you can print transparently to printers on all sorts of networks.
11.1. Printing to a Unix/lpd host
To allow remote machines to print to your printer using the LPD protocol, you must list the machines in /etc/hosts.equiv or /etc/hosts.lpd. (Note that hosts.equiv has a host of other effects; be sure you know what you are doing if you list any machine there). You can allow only certain users on the other machines to print to your printer by usign the rs attribute; read the [177]lpd man page for information on this.
11.1.1. With pdq
With PDQ, you define a printer with the interface type "bsd-lpd". This interface takes arguments for the remote hostname and queue name; the printer definition wizard will prompt you for these.
11.1.2. With lpd
To print to another machine, you make an /etc/printcap entry like this:
# REMOTE djet500
lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:rm=machine.out.there.com:\
:rp=printername:\
:sh:
Note that there is still a spool directory on the local machine managed by lpd. If the remote machine is busy or offline, print jobs from the local machine wait in the spool area until they can be sent.
11.1.3. With rlpr
You can also use rlpr to send a print job directly to a queue on a remote machine without going through the hassle of configuring lpd to handle it. This is mostly useful in situations where you print to a variety of printers only occasionally. From the announcement for rlpr:
Rlpr uses TCP/IP to send print jobs to lpd servers anywhere on a network.
Unlike lpr, it *does not* require that the remote printers be explicitly known to the machine you wish to print from, (e.g. through /etc/printcap) and thus is considerably more flexible and requires less administration.
rlpr can be used anywhere a traditional lpr might be used, and is backwards compatible with traditional BSD lpr.
The main power gained by rlpr is the power to print remotely *from anywhere to anywhere* without regard for how the system you wish to print from was configured. Rlpr can work as a filter just like traditional lpr so that clients executing on a remote machine like netscape, xemacs, etc, etc can print to your local machine with little effort.
Rlpr is available from [178]Metalab.
11.2. Printing to a Windows or Samba printer
There is a Printing to Windows mini-HOWTO out there which has more info than there is here.
11.2.1. From PDQ
There is not a prebuilt smb interface that I am aware of, but it would be fairly easy to create using the model set by the Netatalk-based appletalk interface. Someone please create one and submit it for inclusion!
Read the Windows/LPD section below for more tips on how to do it.
11.2.2. From LPD
It is possible to direct a print queue through the [179]smbclient program (part of the samba suite) to a TCP/IP based SMB print service. Samba includes a script to do this called smbprint. In short, you put a configuration file for the specific printer in question in the spool directory, and install the smbprint script as the if.
The /etc/printcap entry goes like this: lp|remote-smbprinter:\
:sh:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
:if=/usr/local/sbin/smbprint:
You should read the documentation inside the smbprint script for more information on how to set this up.
You can also use smbclient to submit a file directly to an SMB printing service without involving lpd. See the man page.
11.3. Printing to a NetWare Printer
The ncpfs suite includes a utility called nprint which provides the same functionality as smbprint but for NetWare. You can get ncpfs from [180]Metalab. From the LSM entry for version 0.16:
" With ncpfs you can mount volumes of your netware server under Linux. You can also print to netware print queues and spool netware print queues to the Linux printing system. You need kernel 1.2.x or 1.3.54 and above. ncpfs does NOT work with any 1.3.x kernel below 1.3.54. "
11.3.1. From LPD
To make nprint work via lpd, you write a little shell script to print stdin on the NetWare printer, and install that as the if for an lpd print queue. You'll get something like: sub2|remote-NWprinter:\
:sh:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/sub2:\
:if=/var/spool/lpd/nprint-script:
The nprint-script might look approximately like: #! /bin/sh
# You should try the guest account with no password first! /usr/local/bin/nprint -S net -U name -P passwd -q printq-name -
11.4. Printing to an EtherTalk (Apple) printer
The netatalk package includes something like nprint and smbclient. Others have documented the procedure for printing to and from an Apple network far better than I ever will; see the [181]Linux Netatalk-HOWTO.
11.4.1. From PDQ
PDQ includes an interface declaration called "appletalk". This uses the Netatalk package to print to a networked Apple printer. Just select this interface in xpdq's "Add printer" wizard.
11.5. Printing to a networked printer
Many printers come with an ethernet interface which you can print to directly, typically using the LPD protocol. You should follow the instructions that came with your printer or its network adaptor, but in general, such printers are "running" lpd, and provide one or more queues which you can print to. An HP, for example, might work with a printcap like:
lj-5|remote-hplj:\
:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lj-5:\
:rm=printer.name.com:\
:rp=raw:
or, using the PDQ bsd-lpd interface arguments of REMOTE_HOST=printer.name.com and QUEUE=raw.
HP Laserjet printers with JetDirect interfaces generally support two built in lpd queues - "raw" which accepts PCL (and possibly Postscript) and "text" which accepts straight ascii (and copes automatically with the staircase effect). If you've got a JetDirect Plus3 three-port box, the queues are named "raw1", "text2", and so forth.
Note that the ISS company has identified an assortment of denial of service attacks which hang HP Jetdirect interfaces. Most of these have been addressed beginning in Fall 98. These sorts of problems are common in embedded code; few appliance-style devices should be exposed to general Internet traffic.
In a large scale environment, especially a large environment where some printers do not support PostScript, it may be useful to establish a dedicated print server to which all machines print and on which all ghostscript jobs are run. This will allow the queue to be paused or reordered using the topq and lprm commands.
This also allows your Linux box to act as a spool server for the printer so that your network users can complete their print jobs quickly and get on with things without waiting for the printer to print any other job that someone else has sent. This is suggested too if you have unfixable older HP Jetdirects; it reduces the likelihood of the printers wedging.
To do this, set up a queue on your linux box that points at the ethernet equipped HP LJ (as above). Now set up all the clients on your LAN to point at the Linux queue (eg lj-5 in the example above).
Some HP network printers apparently don't heed the banner page setting sent by clients; you can turn off their internally generated banner page by telnetting to the printer, hitting return twice, typing "banner: 0" followed by "quit". There are other settings you can change this way, as well; type "?" to see a list.
The full range of settings can be controlled with HP's [182]webJetAdmin software. This package runs as a daemon, and accepts http requests on a designated port. It serves up forms and Java applets which can control HP printers on the network. In theory, it can also control Unix print queues, but it does so using the rexec service, which is completely unsecure. I don't advise using that feature.
11.5.1. To AppSocket Devices
Some printers (and printer networking "black boxes") support only a cheesy little non-protocol involving plain TCP connections; this is sometimes called the "AppSocket" protocol. Notable in this category are early-model JetDirect (including some JetDirectEx) cards. Basically, to print to the printer, you must open a TCP connection to the printer on a specified port (typically 9100, or 9100, 9101 and 9102 for three-port boxes) and stuff your print job into it. LPRng has built-in support for stuffing print jobs into random TCP ports, but with BSD lpd it's not so easy. The best thing is probably to obtain and use the little utility called netcat.
A netcat-using PDQ interface would look something like this: interface tcp-port-0.1 {
help "This is one of the first interfaces supported by standalone
network printers and print servers. The device simply
listens for a TCP connection on a certain port, and sends
data from any connection to the printer.\nThis interface
requires the netcat program (\"nc\")."
required_args "REMOTE_HOST"
argument {
var = "REMOTE_HOST"
desc = "Remote host"
help = "This is IP name or number of the print server."
}
argument {
var = "REMOTE_PORT"
def_value = "9100"
desc = "Remote port"
help = "This is the TCP port number on the print server that the
print job should be sent to. Most JetDirect cards, and
clones, accept jobs on port 9100 (or 9101 for port 2,
etc)."
}
requires "nc"
send_exec { cat $OUTPUT | nc $REMOTE_HOST $REMOTE_PORT }
}
Failing that, it can be implemented, among other ways, in Perl using the program below. For better performance, use the program netcat ("nc"), which does much the same thing in a general purpose way. Most distributions should have netcat available in prepackaged form.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Thanks to Dan McLaughlin for writing the original version of this # script (And to Jim W. Jones for sitting next to Dan when writing me # for help ;)
$fileName = @ARGV[0];
open(IN,"$fileName") || die "Can't open file $fileName";
$dpi300 = "\x1B*t300R";
$dosCr = "\x1B&k3G";
$ends = "\x0A";
$port = 9100 unless $port;
$them = "bach.sr.hp.com" unless $them;
$AF_INET = 2;
$SOCK_STREAM = 1;
$SIG{'INT'} = 'dokill';
$sockaddr = 'S n a4 x8';
chop($hostname = `hostname`);
($name,$aliases,$proto) = getprotobyname('tcp'); ($name,$aliases,$port) = getservbyname($por | 
