Re: PPD files vs printer drivers also LPD vs LPRng vs CUPS
Predrag Punosevac wrote: I am trying to understand little bit better Unix printing. I am terribly confused about the real meaning of PPD files and printer drivers. According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_Printer_Description PPD files are post script description files that act as a drivers for post script printers. This seems clear to me but I have never had a post script printer in my life. According to same page CUPS-PPD are used by CUPS to do post-script printing on non-postscript printers by directing files through CUPS-filter. Could somebody explain this things better to me. Every time I used CUPS the PPD files where enough to enable me printing. Did I really use some other drivers beside these PPD files or did CUPS communicate with my printers with some generic driver and just uses PPD files to do filtering. In LPD it seems to me that this is more clear as when I run ./SETUP apsfilter I am really question to select the driver from the Ghostscript collection. I have never used LPD without the apsfilter. What is the simplest way to send ps file to the printer that doesn't speak ps? If I could do that everything else is peace of cake. I read very carefully printing form the handbook but I want to learn more. Could anybody explain me if there are some strong reasons for choosing LPD over CUPS or LPRng system (seems just GUI added on the top of LPD) It would logical to me that LPD is safer (CUPS port has some security warnings) and maybe more reliable. In any case it is included in the base system and I prefer to use something included in the base system Thanks to ALL Predrag ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] This seems http://www.linuxprinting.org/kpfeifle/LinuxKongress2002/Tutorial/III.PostScript-and-PPDs/III.PostScript-and-PPDs.html like a good starting point for my questions. Any Adobe or CUPS developers around that can give me more information. What should I read? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PPD files vs printer drivers also LPD vs LPRng vs CUPS
On Sat, Nov 10, 2007 at 04:39:29PM -0700, Predrag Punosevac wrote: I am trying to understand little bit better Unix printing. I am terribly confused about the real meaning of PPD files and printer drivers. According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_Printer_Description PPD files are post script description files that act as a drivers for post script printers. This seems clear to me but I have never had a post script printer in my life. They are not really drivers but more files that describe the capabilities of the printer. According to same page CUPS-PPD are used by CUPS to do post-script printing on non-postscript printers by directing files through CUPS-filter. Could somebody explain this things better to me. Every time I used CUPS the PPD files where enough to enable me printing. Did I really use some other drivers beside these PPD files or did CUPS communicate with my printers with some generic driver and just uses PPD files to do filtering. The latter. Cups uses the ghostscript program to translate postscript into something that the non-postscript printer can understand. What is the simplest way to send ps file to the printer that doesn't speak ps? If I could do that everything else is peace of cake. I read very carefully printing form the handbook but I want to learn more. Use ghostscript. This is what both apsfilter and cups do. They've just made it a lot easier than doing it yourself. And as you can see from the size of both cups and apsfilter 'everything else' is a substantial piece of cake. Could anybody explain me if there are some strong reasons for choosing LPD over CUPS or LPRng system (seems just GUI added on the top of LPD) It would logical to me that LPD is safer (CUPS port has some security warnings) and maybe more reliable. In any case it is included in the base system and I prefer to use something included in the base system In the past, lpd had a lot of security issues as well. I'm not sure if they're all solved. Both apsfilter and cups do more than standard lpd, which is only a printer spooler. Both cups and apsfilter look at what you're trying to print and try to convert it to a form suitable for printing. Standard lpr only understands a couple of ancient formats (ditroff, dvi, cif, plot) next to plain text. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpCHd5TdzjCt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PPD files vs printer drivers also LPD vs LPRng vs CUPS
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007, Predrag Punosevac wrote: I am trying to understand little bit better Unix printing. I am terribly confused about the real meaning of PPD files and printer drivers. According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_Printer_Description PPD files are post script description files that act as a drivers for post script printers. PPDs are files that describe what a PostScript printer can do. They may have PostScript routines in them that can be used by a driver to take advantage of the printer's abilities. According to same page CUPS-PPD are used by CUPS to do post-script printing on non-postscript printers by directing files through CUPS-filter. Could somebody explain this things better to me. Every time I used CUPS the PPD files where enough to enable me printing. Did I really use some other drivers beside these PPD files or did CUPS communicate with my printers with some generic driver and just uses PPD files to do filtering. Can't comment much on CUPS; I've never had the patience to work on it much. I prefer to have the responsibility to send correctly-formatted files to the printer myself, rather than have a filter system try to format things automatically. What is the simplest way to send ps file to the printer that doesn't speak ps? If I could do that everything else is peace of cake. Ghostscript is used to render a PostScript file into something the printer can handle. Ghostscript has a lot of built-in printer drivers. For example: /usr/local/bin/gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sOutputFile=- - That takes PostScript on stdin and converts to PCL on stdout. If you save that to /usr/local/libexec/ps2pcl and make it executable, you can use it as an input filter in a printcap entry. gs -h will show you a list of built-in printer drivers in Ghostscript. Could anybody explain me if there are some strong reasons for choosing LPD over CUPS or LPRng system (seems just GUI added on the top of LPD) It would logical to me that LPD is safer (CUPS port has some security warnings) and maybe more reliable. In any case it is included in the base system and I prefer to use something included in the base system Printer filter systems have varying degrees of complexity and dependencies. lpd with simple filters is probably the simplest, with the lowest overhead because it's part of the base system. -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
