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Printing for the Impatient using ApsFilter

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the putting-words-on-paper dept.

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."

4 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. That's sad.... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the old SysV days, you HAD to go through a convoluted filter set and queue system to do about anything. If yoy're still doing it this way, you're insane.

    The best way to print anything now is using CUPS. Easy to set up and administer. Who WOULDNT want to use it?

    --
    1. Re:That's sad.... by i18rabbit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why is this a 5 (or even interesting):

      That's sad.... (Score:5, Interesting)
      The best way to print anything now is using
      CUPS. Easy to set up and administer. Who
      WOULDNT want to use it?

      When this is a 4?

      Re:That's sad.... (Score:4, Insightful)
      Your post is so typical of what I see on
      Slashdot these days ...

      The first comment was totally stupid with no
      substance or relevance, and should be a -1 or
      less. The second comment was very
      substantive and intelligent and deserves
      a book of deep thought and commentary.

      It exposes a small symptom in the technology
      arena that appears to be on the rise
      throughout society; the result of turning
      spankings into "time-outs", republics
      into "democracies", and individualism into
      "collectivism". A symptom of teachers that
      are ignorant of their subjects, kids that
      use calculators to do basic math, and
      graduates that get diplomas for purposes
      of self-esteem. A symptom of the feminization
      of men, the masculation of women, the reverence
      of followers and distain for individual success.

      Most every post (given that this is a hacker
      type forum) is a display of ignorance with
      a promotional cover, and/or a whiny complaint.
      UNIX printing is as simple as could be. No one
      needs CUPS or 'apsfilter' or any of it. Just
      how hard is it to pipe as necessary into 'gs',
      directing output into a printer device?

      With 'jpeg2ps', 'gs', and a few lines of awk
      anyone can print JPEG's, PS/EPS/PDF, DOS(CRLF),
      UNIX(LF) files, and more. And if you have a good
      PS printer, you don't even need the 'gs'.
      Any decent software package that needs
      to print can print PS.

      A few lines of awk can do everything
      all these programs can do (and more): /usr/bin/lp /usr/bin/lpq /usr/bin/lpr /usr/bin/lprm /usr/sbin/lpc /usr/sbin/lpd /etc/printcap /usr/libexec/lpr/lpf

      You can even have your script page number
      text files, etc. When I set up a system
      for printing, I need to change one 'gs'
      variable in an awk script, and that's it.
      What makes that so hard? UNIX printing
      has been utterly simplistic for years.

  2. There are a wide variety of tools. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    When I was just starting out, getting the printer configured was actually the hardest part of working with the operating system. All these filters, and trying to figure out how to pipe the stuff properly to the device or use something like lpq.

    It's definitely time for an all-in-one one stop solution to the problem. Some sort of program that configures these filters automatically on your dead or dying operating system, and now it looks like there's a bit of hope. Creating and working with Word documents was perhaps the other pitfall, but now that OpenOffice can do that and support PDF writing I might have to take a second look at this neo of a system.

    How does installation go?

  3. interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    We were so happy when Apple decided to go with CUPS as their printing system

    I was a 'happy user' of LPRng 'till I heard Apple was making CUPS thier print engine of choice.

    Then I moved to CUPS, hopin for a 'eaiser' printing future. The comment about having Add a lot of printers, a lot of different ppd files and you really have a nightmare prompts me to ask - what is 'another' option?

    Straight BSD lpr is a non-option. AIX had a 'nice' print spooler, if you didn't SMIT and reboots. (and, well, it was AIX) So other than LPRng, what is other useful choices?