>>>>> Till Kamppeter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> The nicest free software for printer administration, KUPS searches
> for printer drivers in /usr/share/cups/model/, so it finds all
> drivers supplied with CUPS and all drivers of the CUPS-drivers
> package. There is no possibility to get drivers from CUPS-O-MATIC or
> Adobe directly out of KUPS. My idea is now the following: I create a
> robot to put on a server at MandrakeSoft and to start once a weak by
> cron, which automatically surfs to the following pages:
> CUPS-O-MATIC -> Generate all possible PPD-files and put them into
> subdirectories of /usr/share/cups/model/
So I've got a script doing this; we just need to identify a better set
of filenames to put in the script. *Please* don't do it from outside;
it's much better if I do it by looking into the Postsgres db directly.
> What do you think about that?
This is all fine by me. Just have your robot steal the tarball I
make.
Note that, per my database license (see the "About this site" section
on my website), users *must* be able to replace your distributed data
with new stuff from me. Obviously, you're doing just that, so we're
all happy ;)
> Non-GS-based drivers: The only form of non-GS-based drivers I know are
> programs where GS pipes a raw bitmap to the driver which is a seperate
> program. Are there other types of non-GS-based drivers? Which and how do
> they work? Are they also supported by CUPS-O-MATIC?
Yes, and yes:
- The oki4w package, for example, is a standalone program which runs
Ghostscript itself. So you get ps in and printer data out, with no
Ghostscript visible to the user. The forthcoming OMNI driver
package from IBM may work in this way as well; as it supports some
500 printers it's certainly worth accommodating.
- My schema supports arbitrary command lines. So anything you can
run as a filter cupsomatic can handle.
> Printers supported only with patched GS: I have heard that some
> printers need a patch to GS to be supported. Are there many patches
> to GS for different printers? Should one hav many GS executables for
> that reason (gs-lexmark, gs-hp, gs-canon, ...)?
One should distribute a Ghostscript with the proverbial kitchen sink
thrown in. Basically no one does, however. There are a great many
third-party Ghostscript drivers out there which are not in the master
gs distribution, since there are sometimes licensing troubles with
that.
Ghostscript 5.5 is GPL, but has assorted bugs which warrant upgrading
to 6.01 for many people.
Ghostscript 6.0 may not be distributed with third-party drivers linked
in unless you distribute it as part of a totally free software
compilation. Only Debian qualifies, and they still put it in nonfree,
IIRC, since this extra restriction makes gs itself nonfree.
Ghostscript 7.0 is intended to support dynamically loadable drivers.
That will end this problem.
> Micro$oft-compressed PPDs: Is there any free software program to
> uncompress Micro$oft-compressed PPD files? For example I had to
> install a HP Laserjet 4050 with PostScript interpreter and on its CD
> I only found a file 'hp4050_6.pp_' which is the M$-compressed
> version of 'hp4050_6.ppd'. The only possibility to uncompress it,
> was taking it with a floppy to an old DOS/Win3.1x box and
> uncompressing it there using 'expand hp4050_6.pp_ hp4050_6.ppd'. I
> think for most users doing this is impossible. Has anyone a
> solution?
Interesting. There must be a de-expand thing out there; MS has been
using that same thing for ages.
--
Grant Taylor - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/
Linux Printing Website and HOWTO: http://www.linuxprinting.org/
I do consulting in most things Unix/Linux/*BSD/Perl/C/C++
