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Printing for the Impatient using ApsFilter
BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration."
CUPS is fine if it works out of the box. If it doesn't do that, you can be stuck without a working printer for a long time while you ramble through woefully inadequate documentation.
If you feel that way, install the CUPS port and be happy. When it works for a given situation (about 85% of the time) CUPS is simple and fast to set up. But when things go wrong, you'll see just how complicated CUPS really is. It's nice to have a simpler (implementation-wise) method available to deal with such situations.
Your post is so typical of what I see on Slashdot these days. Why use BSD when you have Linux? Why use some other processor when you have Intel? Why use another browser when you have Mozilla? It's the high-school herd mentality. It's "geek chic." It's a lazy way to avoid learning in depth and developing your own base of experiences and opinions.
It's depressing.
What, exactly, does CUPS give me? To configure my printer under FreeBSD I needed to add two lines to /etc/printcap. How is installing another piece of software easier and better than that?
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CUPS is nice for a small setup with not that many printers. Add a lot of printers, a lot of different ppd files and you really have a nightmare. We were so happy when Apple decided to go with CUPS as their printing system but ever since then we have had nothing but problems. If someone knows how to solve duplex printing on large OCE printers please let me know.
C'mon tr, you should know better than this. A quick dig on the CUPS website would quickly reveal an overview page detailing a raft of features that differentiate it from a standard LPR set up. Here's a brief run down of some of the feaures provided:
Cross platform system for network printing (did you know that CUPS is available for Windows as well as OS X, *BSD and Linux?).
The ability for printers to shared in such a way that a remote machine can automatically discover and print to a remote printer without having expliclty been configured to see it (Windows has been doing this for years. It's good to see this simplicity spreading elsewhere) while still announcing the capabilities of that printer.
Support for many (non postscript) backends that other printing systems may not (including things like samba for printers shared via Windows).
Queueing systems so that you can set documents to be printed to the first available printer on a network.
If your printer is non postscript (which many are), configuring CUPS may be a whole lot easier than trying to set up a magicfilter chain to do the right thing.
Sure, in your case perhaps editing printcap was "better and easier" but that doesn't mean that choice shouldn't be there for those not so fortunate to have a postscript printer, need sophisticated queing or have to set up a dozens of computers to print.