I am currently attending the LISA Conference, and was talking to one of the LPRng users. (** If you remember this discussion, send me email and you will get the blame^H^H^H^H^H^H credit for this).
We were discussing the Foomatic stuff (This is cool stuff, see Grant Taylor 'www.linuxprinting.org' site for a link to it: http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html) Grant Taylor and Till Kamppeter have set up a database of the various printers + GhostScript converters for them, and have whipped up a filter to use this information. The person at the LISA conference was talking about the Foomatic stuff and said something like: 'well, why not just pipeline the two filters?' and I had a sudden insight into how to do this. I spent a couple of hourse (3:00AM - 5:00AM) at the office trying this out and it worked... much to my extreme pleasure. In the FOOMATIC documentation, they suggest you download the Foomatic stuff and then use: lp: :filter=/.../lpdomatic :filter_options= --lprng $Z /path/to/description/file Well, not being shy or hesitant, I have just stolen^H^H^H^H^H borrowed some stuff from the lpdomatic filter,... OK I ripped the guts out of the lpdomatic filter and added some extra stuff... bit of testing here and there for some things... Once I test this on the zillions of different platforms I will post it to Grant Taylor... In an IFHP release coming soon, you will be able to do: lp: :filter=/.../ifhp :ifhp=foomatic=xxxx where xxxx is the foomatic printer type... Foomatic will take care of the conversion (YES! YES!) and the zillion of fussy GhostScript options (YES! YES!) Ummmm. I mean the 'zillion of necessary for fine tuning out output' options... Ifhp will then use the output of the foomatic conversion and fling it at the printer, monitoring it and otherwise abusing it as required. This appears to be working in a horribly hacked prototype. I am probably going to either modify the ifhp.conf database and add the 'foomatic' entries. Ummm... If you are really really interested, here is the way the I flung it together. The ifhp.conf file has a new entry: foomatic= # foomaticID ifhpmodel foomatic model HP4 hp4 xxxx HP5 hp5simx xxxx This is a list of all of the printers supported by the foomatic print filter and the corresponding IFHP driver. (Hopefully I can talk Grant Taylor into adding a new field into the Foomatic Database that will contain the ifhp model information value as a field.) If the 'foomatic' option is present, then IFHP will look into the foomatic list and pull out the ifhp model and other stuff. If you have not specified a model using the 'model=xxx' then it will use the associated IFHP model. If it does not find one then it will default to using the foomatic model. Now I have the necessary information to invoke the foomatic filter if the input file type is PostScript. This seems to work pretty well... Now all that needs to be done is have the RedHat Printerconf tool create a printcap with: lp: :filter=/.../ifhp :ifhp=foomatic=xxxx where xxxx is the foomatic printer type... And we will get the benefits of foomatic/ifhp and so forth. By the way, coming soon: lp: :notifier=/... <- watch this space for details Patrick Powell Astart Technologies, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 9475 Chesapeake Drive, Suite D, Network and System San Diego, CA 92123 Consulting 858-874-6543 FAX 858-279-8424 LPRng - Print Spooler (http://www.lprng.com) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOU MUST BE A LIST MEMBER IN ORDER TO POST TO THE LPRNG MAILING LIST The address you post from MUST be your subscription address If you need help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (or lprng-requests or lprng-digest-requests) with the word 'help' in the body. For the impatient, to subscribe to a list with name LIST, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with: | example: subscribe LIST <mailaddr> | subscribe lprng-digest [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe LIST <mailaddr> | unsubscribe lprng [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have major problems, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word LPRNGLIST in the SUBJECT line. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
