The Linux Printing HOWTO
Grant Taylor, <gtaylor+pht@picante.com>
v3.10, 10 September 1996
This is the Linux Printing HOWTO, a collection of information on how
to generate, preview, print and fax anything under Linux (and other
Unices in general).
1. Intro
Since this is a complete rewrite, much information from previous
editions has been lost. This is by design, as the previous HOWTOs
were so large as to be 60 typeset pages, and had the narrative flow of
a dead turtle. If you do not find the answer here, you are encouraged
to a) scan the previous version at The PHT Home Page
<http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/pht/> and b) drop me a note saying
what ought to be here but isn't.
The Printing HOWTO Home Page <http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/pht/> is
a good place to find the latest version; it is also, of course,
distributed from SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu) and your friendly local LDP
mirror.
1.1. History
This is the third generation, which is to say the third complete
rewrite, of the Printing HOWTO. The history of the PHT may be
chronicled thusly:
1. I wrote the printing-howto in response to too many printing
questions in comp.os.linux, and posted it. This predated the HOWTO
project by a few months and was thus the first FAQlet called a
`howto'. This edition was in plain ascii.
2. After joining the HOWTO project, the Printing-HOWTO was merged with
an Lpd FAQ by Brian McCauley <B.A.McCauley@bham.ac.uk>; we
continued to co-author the PHT for two years or so. At some point
we incorporated the work of Karl Auer <Karl.Auer@anu.edu.au>. This
generation of the PHT was in TeXinfo, and available in PS, HTML,
Ascii, and Info.
3. After letting the PHT rot and decay for over a year, and an
unsuccessful attempt at getting someone else to maintain it, this
rewrite happened. This generation of the PHT is in Linuxdoc-SGML.
1.2. Copyright
This document is Copyright (c) 1996 by Grant Taylor. Please copy and
distribute it widely, but do not modify the text or omit my name.
2. How to print
If you've already got lpd setup to print to your printer, or your
system administrator already did so, or your vendor did so for you,
then all you need to do is learn how to use the lpr command. The
Printing Usage HOWTO <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Printing-Usage-
HOWTO.html> covers this, and a few other queue manipulation commands
you should probably know.
3. Kernel printer devices
3.1. The lp device
The Linux kernel, assuming you have compiled in or loaded the lp
device (the output of cat /proc/devices should include the device lp),
provides one or more of /dev/lp0, /dev/lp1, and /dev/lp2. These are
NOT assigned dynamically, rather, each corresponds to a specific
hardware I/O address. This means that your first printer may be lp0
or lp1 depending on your hardware. Try both ;)
One cannot run the plip and lp drivers at the same time on any given
port. You can, however, have one or the other driver loaded at any
given time either manually, or by kerneld with v2 (and later 1.3.x)
kernels. By carefully setting the interrupts and such, you can
supposedly run plip on one port and lp on the other. One person did
so by editing the drivers; I eagerly await a success report of someone
doing so with only a clever command line.
There is a little utility called tunelp floating about with which you,
as root, can tune the Linux lp device's interrupt usage, polling rate,
and other options.
When built in to some 1.3.x and v2 kernels, the kernel will accept an
lp= option to set interrupts and io addresses:
When the lp driver is built in to the kernel, you may use the
LILO/LOADLIN command line to set the port addresses and interrupts
that the driver will use.
Syntax: lp=port0[,irq0[,port1[,irq1[,port2[,irq2]]]]]
For example: lp=0x378,0 or lp=0x278,5,0x378,7 **
Note that if this feature is used, you must specify *all* the ports
you want considered, there are no defaults. You can disable a
built-in driver with lp=0.
When loaded as a module in version 2 and late-model 1.3.x kernels, it
is possible to specify io addresses and interrupt lines on the insmod
command line (or in /etc/conf.modules so as to affect kerneld) using
the usual syntax. The parameters are io=port0,port1,port2 and
irq=irq0,irq1,irq2. Read ye the man page for insmod for more
information on this.
**For those of you who (like me) can never find the standard port
numbers when you need them, they are as in the second example above.
The other port (lp0) is at 0x3bc. I've no idea what interrupt it
usually uses.
3.2. Serial devices
Serial devices are usually called something like /dev/ttyS1 under
Linux. The utility stty will allow you to interactively view or set
the settings for a serial port; setserial will allow you to control a
few extended attributes and configure IRQs and I/O addresses for non-
standard ports. Further discussion of serial ports under Linux may be
found in the Serial-HOWTO <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Serial-
HOWTO.html>.
When using a slow serial printer with flow control, you may find that
some of your print jobs get truncated. This may be due to the serial
port, whose default behavior is to purge any untransmitted characters
from its buffer 30 seconds after the port device is closed. The
buffer can hold up to 4096 characters, and if your printer uses flow
control and is slow enough that it can't accept all the data from the
buffer within 30 seconds after printing software has closed the serial
port, the tail end of the buffer's contents will be lost. If the
command cat file > /dev/ttyS2 produces complete printouts for short
files but truncated ones for longer files, you may have this
condition.
The 30 second interval can be adjusted through the "closing_wait"
element of the serial port's data structure using an ioctl() call.
Setserial does not deal with this data element but does handle others
in the same data structure, and it is a simple matter to modify
setserial to deal with closing_wait. Then, in rc.serial, the
setserial command for your printing serial port can modified to set
the closing_wait at the same time as it sets that port's other
parameters.
4. Which spooling software?
Until recently, the choice for Linux users was simple - everyone ran
the same old lpd lifted mostly verbatim out of BSD's Net-2
distribution. Even today, most vendors ship this software. But this
is beginning to change. SVR4-like systems including Sun's Solaris
come with a completely different print spooling package, centered
around lpsched. And there are signs that some Linux vendors will
shift to providing LPRng, a far less ancient print spooling
implementation that is freely available. LPRng is far easier to
administer for large installations and has a less frightfully
haphazard codebase than does stock lpd.
For the moment, even in light of the new options, lpd is probably fine
for most Linux users. While it isn't the snazziest system, it works
fine once set up, and it is well understood and extensively documented
in third-party Unix books.
If you'd like more information on LPRng, check out LPRng - An Enhanced
Printer Spooler
<http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov:81/ltpcf/about/unix/Depotdoc/LPRng/>.
Future versions of this HOWTO will include information on using both
LPRng and regular lpd.
5. How it works, basic
In order to get printing working well, you need to understand how the
lpd system works.
Lpd stands for Line Printer Daemon, and refers in different contexts
to both the daemon and the whole collection of programs which run
print spooling. These are:
lpd
The spooling daemon. One of these runs to control everything on
a machine, AND one is run per printer while the printer is
printing.
lpr
The user spooling command. Lpr contacts lpd and injects a new
print job into the spool.
lpq
Lists the jobs in a print queue.
lpc
The Lpd system control command. With lpc you can stop, start,
reorder, etc, the print queues.
lprm
lprm will remove a job from the print spool.
So how does it fit together? Well, when the system boots, lpd is run.
It scans the file /etc/printcap to learn which printers it will be
managing spools for. Each time someone runs lpr, lpr contacts lpd
through the named socket /dev/printer, and feeds lpd both the file to
print and some information about who is printing and how to print it.
Lpd then prints the file on the appropriate printer in turn.
The lp system was originally designed when most printers were line
printers - that is, people mostly printed plain ascii. As it turns
out, only a little extra scripting is needed to make lpd work quite
well for today's print jobs, which are often in PostScript, or text,
or dvi, or...
6. How to set things up, basic
6.1. Traditional lpd configuration
The minimal setup for lpd rsults in a system that can queue files and
print them. It will not pay any attention to wether or not your
printer will understand them, and will probably not let you produce
attractive output. Nevertheless, it is the first step to
understanding, so read on!
Basically, to add a print queue to lpd, you must add an entry in
/etc/printcap, and make the new spool directory under /var/spool/lpd.
An entry in /etc/printcap looks like:
# LOCAL djet500
lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=/dev/lp0:\
:sh:
This defines a spool called lp, dj, or deskjet, spooled in the direc�
tory /var/spool/lpd/dj, with no per-job maximum size limit, which
prints to the device /dev/lp0, and which does not have a banner page
(with the name of the person who printed, etc) added to the front of
the print job.
Go now and read the man page for printcap.
The above looks very simple, but there a catch - unless I send in
files a DeskJet 500 can understand, this DeskJet will print strange
things. For example, sending an ordinary Unix text file to a deskjet
results in literally interpreted newlines, and gets me:
This is line one.
This is line two.
This is line three.
ad nauseum. Printing a PostScript file to this spool would get a
beautiful listing of the PostScript commands, printed out with this
"staircase effect", but no useful output.
Clearly more is needed, and this is the purpose of filtering. The
more observant of you who read the printcap man page might have
noticed the spool attributes if and of. Well, if, or the input
filter, is just what we need here.
If we write a small shell script called filter that adds carriage
returns before newlines, the staircasing can be eliminated. So we
have to add in an if line to our printcap entry above:
lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=/dev/lp0:\
:if=/var/spool/lpd/dj/filter:\
:sh:
A simple filter script might be:
#!perl
while(<STDIN>){chop $_; print "$_\r\n";};
If we were to do the above, we'd have a spool to which we could print
regular Unix text files and get meaningful results. (Yes, there are
four million better ways to write this filter, but few so illustra�
tive. You are encouraged to do this more efficiently.)
The only remaining problem is that printing plain text is really not
too hot - surely it would be better to be able to print PostScript and
other formatted or graphic types of output. Well, yes, it would, and
it's easy to do. The method is simply an extention of the above
linefeed-fixing filter. If you write a filter than can accept
arbitrary file types as input and produce DeskJet-kosher output for
each case, then you've got a clever print spooler indeed!
Such a filter is called a magic filter. Don't bother writing one
yourself unless you print strange things - there are a good many
written for you already on the net.
6.2. File Permissions
By popular demand, I include below a listing of the permissions on
interesting files on my system. There are a number of better ways to
do this, ideally using only SGID binaries and not making everything
SUID root, but this is how my system came out of the box, and it works
for me. (Quite frankly, if your vendor can't even ship a working lpd
you're in for a rough ride).
-r-sr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/bin/lpr*
-r-sr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/bin/lprm*
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root /usr/sbin/lpd*
-r-xr-sr-x 1 root lp /usr/sbin/lpc*
drwxrwxr-x 4 root lp /var/spool/lpd/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root lp /var/spool/lpd/lp/
Lpd must currently be run as root so that it can bind to the low-
numbered lp service port. It should probably become UID lp.lp or
something after binding, but I don't think it does. Bummer.
7. How to obtain an appropriate magic filter
7.1. APS Filter
One of the nicest magic filter packages is aps filter, by Andreas
Klemm. The Linux Software Map entry goes something like this:
Begin3
Title: apsfilter
Version: 4.9.1
Entered-date: Montag, 10. Juli 1995, 21:22:35 Uhr MET DST
Description: magicfilter for lpd with auto filetype detection
Keywords: lpd magicfilter aps apsfilter
Author: andreas@knobel.GUN.de (Andreas Klemm)
Maintained-by: sledge@hammer.oche.de (Thomas Bueschgens)
andreas@knobel.GUN.de (Andreas Klemm)
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu
/pub/Linux/system/Printing/
211KB aps-491.tgz
Original-site: ftp-i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
/pub/Linux/pak/APSfilter/aps-491.tgz
Platforms: C-Compiler, gs Postscript emulator, pbmutils
Copying-policy: GPL
End
APS filter installs as an if filter for a print queue, and will trans�
late from many common file types into your printer's command set. It
understands, for example, text, PostScript, dvi, gif, and others.
7.2. Magic-filter
The magic-filter package, written by B.A.McCawley, works much the same
way as does APSfilter, but since it is written in bash, it might be
more easy to customize. The LSM entry:
Version: 0.4
Description: Bash scripts to simplify the task of configuring lpd to
auto-detect file types using /etc/magic. (As advertised in the
printing-HOWTO).
This package uses existing filters so it only prints file types for
which one already has filters (or compressed versions
thereof). Alterative magic filter approches are described in the
printing-HOWTO.
Keywords: lpd, /etc/magic, printing, filter
Author: B.A.McCauley@bham.ac.uk (Brian McCauley)
Maintained-by: B.A.McCauley@bham.ac.uk
Primary-site: tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux/sources/usr.bin
magic-filter-0.4.tar.gz 5709
Copying-policy: GNU GPL
7.3. The other Magicfilter
For maximum confusion, there appear to be two packages named just
magic filter out there. (Or are they the same?)
Title: magicfilter
Version: 1.1b
Entered-date: 04APR95
Description: A customizable, extensible automatic printer filter.
Lets you automatically detect and print just about any
data type you can find a conversion utility for. This
filter is written in C and is controlled completely
from an external printer configuration file.
This version adds automagic creation of configuration
files based on the installed software on your system,
courtesy of GNU Autoconf.
This version is a bug fix from 1.1/1.1a; filters for
non-ASCII capable PostScript printers have been added.
Author: H. Peter Anvin <Peter.Anvin@linux.org>
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu
53000 /pub/Linux/system/Printing/magicfilter-1.1b.tar.gz
Copying-policy: GPL
8. Serial printers under lpd
8.1. Setting up in printcap
Lpd provides five attributes which you can set in /etc/printcap to
control all the settings of the serial port a printer is on. Read the
printcap man page and note the meanings of br#, fc#, xc#, fs# and xs#.
The last four of these attributes are bitmaps indicating the settings
for use the port. The br# atrribute is simply the baud rate, ie
`br#9600'.
It is very easy to translate from stty settings to printcap flag
settings. If you need to, see the man page for stty now.
Use stty to set up the printer port so that you can cat a file to it
and have it print correctly. Here's what `stty -a' looks like for my
printer port:
dina:/usr/users/andy/work/lpd/lpd# stty -a < /dev/ttyS2
speed 9600 baud; rows 0; columns 0; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
eol2 = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W;
lnext = ^V; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts
-ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr
-igncr -icrnl ixon -ixoff -iuclc -ixany -imaxbel
-opost -olcuc -ocrnl -onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0
bs0 vt0 ff0
-isig -icanon -iexten -echo -echoe -echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase
-tostop -echoprt -echoctl -echoke
The only changes between this and the way the port is initialized at
bootup are -clocal, -crtscts, and ixon. Your port may well be differ�
ent depending on how your printer does flow control.
You actually use stty in a somewhat odd way. Since stty operates on
the terminal connected to it's standard input, you use it to
manipulate a given serial port by using the `<' character as above.
Once you have your stty settings right, so that `cat file >
/dev/ttyS2' (in my case) sends the file to the printer, look at the
file /usr/src/linux/include/linux/termios.h. This contains a lot of
#defines and a few structs (You may wish to cat this file to the
printer (you do have that working, right?) and use it as scratch
paper). Go to the section that starts out
/* c_cflag bit meaning */
#define CBAUD 0000017
This section lists the meaning of the fc# and fs# bits. You will
notice that the names there (after the baud rates) match up with one
of the lines of stty output. Didn't I say this was going to be easy?
Note which of those settings are preceded with a - in your stty
output. Sum up all those numbers (they are octal). This represents the
bits you want to clear, so the result is your fc# capability. Of
course, remember that you will be setting bits directly after you
clear, so you can just use `fc#0177777' (I do).
Now do the same for those settings (listed in this section) which do
not have a - before them in your stty output. In my example the
important ones are CS8 (0000060), HUPCL (0002000), and CREAD
(0000200). Also note the flags for your baud rate (mine is 0000015).
Add those all up, and in my example you get 0002275. This goes in your
fs# capability (`fs#02275' works fine in my example).
Do the same with set and clear for the next section of the include
file, "c_lflag bits". In my case I didn't have to set anything, so I
just use `xc#0157777' and `xs#0'.
8.2. Older serial printers that drop characters
Jon Luckey points out that some older serial printers with ten-cent
serial interfaces and small buffers really mean stop when they say so
with flow control. He found that disabling the FIFO in his Linux
box's 16550 serial port with setserial corrected the problem of
dropped characters (you apparently just specify the uart type as an
8250 to do this).
9. Vendor Solutions
This section is, by definition, incomplete. Feel free to send in
details of your favourite distribution.
9.1. RedHat 2.x and 3.0.3 (Picasso)
RedHat has a GUI printer administration tool which can add remote
printers and printers on local devices. It lets you choose a
ghostscript-supported printer type and Unix device file to print to,
then installs a print queue in /etc/printcap and writes a short
PostScript-and-ascii magic filter based around gs and nenscript. This
solution works fairly well, and is trivial to setup for common cases.
RedHat's most recent BETA release (Rembrandt II) apparently uses
LPRng. I haven't looked at Rembrandt yet.
9.2. Other Distributions
Please send me info on what other distributions do.
10. How to print to a printer over the network
One of the features of lpd is that it supports printing over the
network to printers physically connected to a different machine. With
the careful combination of filter scripts and assorted utilities, you
can make lpr print transparently to printers on all sorts of networks.
10.1. To a Unix/lpd host
To allow remote machines to print to your printer, you must list the
machines in /etc/hosts.equiv or /etc/hosts.lpd. (Note that
hosts.equiv has a host of other effects; be sure you know what you are
doing if you list any machine there). You can allow only certain
users on the other machines to print to your printer by usign the rs
attribute; read the lpd man page for information on this.
10.2. With lpd
To print to another machine, you make an /etc/printcap entry like
this:
# REMOTE djet500
lp|dj|deskjet:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/dj:\
:rm=machine.out.there.com:\
:rp=printername:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:sh:
Note that there is still a spool directory on the local machine man�
aged by lpd. If the remote machine is busy or offline, print jobs
from the local machine wait in the spool area until they can be sent.
10.3. With rlpr
You can also use rlpr to send a print job directly to a queue on a
remote machine without going through the hassle of configuring lpd to
handle it. This is mostly useful in situations where you print to a
variety of printers only occasionally. From the announcement for
rlpr:
Rlpr uses TCP/IP to send print jobs to lpd servers anywhere on a
network.
Unlike lpr, it *does not* require that the remote printers be
explicitly known to the machine you wish to print from, (e.g. through
/etc/printcap) and thus is considerably more flexible and requires
less administration.
rlpr can be used anywhere a traditional lpr might be used, and is
backwards compatible with traditional BSD lpr.
The main power gained by rlpr is the power to print remotely *from
anywhere to anywhere* without regard for how the system you wish to
print from was configured. Can work as a filter just like traditional
lpr so that clients executing on a remote machine like netscape,
xemacs, etc, etc can print to your local machine with little effort.
Rlpr is available from SunSite
<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Printing/>.
10.4. To a Win95, WinNT, LanManager, or Samba printer
It is possible to direct an lpd queue through the smbclient program
(part of the samba suite) to a TCP/IP based SMB print service. Samba
includes a script to do this called smbprint. In short, you put a
configuration file for the specific printer in question in the spool
directory, and install the smbprint script as the if.
The /etc/printcap entry goes like this:
lp|remote-smbprinter:\
:lp=/dev/null:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
:if=/usr/local/sbin/smbprint:
You should read the documentation inside the smbprint script for more
information on how to set this up.
You can also use smbclient to submit a file directly to an SMB
printing service without involving lpd. See the man page.
10.5. To a NetWare Printer
The ncpfs suite includes a utility called nprint which provides the
same functionality as smbprint but for NetWare. You can get ncpfs
from <ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/ncpfs/>. From the LSM entry for
version 0.16:
With ncpfs you can mount volumes of your netware server
under Linux. You can also print to netware print queues and
spool netware print queues to the Linux printing system. You
need kernel 1.2.x or 1.3.54 and above. ncpfs does NOT work
with any 1.3.x kernel below 1.3.54.
To make nprint work via lpd, you write a little shell script to print
stdin on the NetWare printer, and install that as the if for an lpd
print queue. You'll get something like:
sub2|remote-NWprinter:\
:lp=/dev/null:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/sub2:\
:if=/var/spool/lpd/nprint-script:
The nprint-script might look approximately like:
#! /bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/nprint -S net -U name -P passwd -q printq-q -
10.6. To an EtherTalk (Apple) printer
The netatalk package includes something like nprint and smbclient.
Werner Eugster has documented the procedure for printing to and from
an Apple network far better than I ever will; see his web page
<http://garnet.berkeley.edu/~weugster/appleprint.html>.
Obscure caveat of the week: Netatalk does not work with SMC Etherpower
PCI Card with a DEC tulip chip.
10.7. To an HP or other ethernet printer
HPs and some other printers come with an ethernet interface which you
can print to directly using lpd. You should follow the instructions
that came with your printer or its network adaptor, but in general,
such printers are "running" lpd, and provide one or more queues which
you can print to. An HP, for example, might work with a printcap
like:
lj-5|remote-hplj:\
:lp=/dev/null:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lj-5:\
:rm=printer.name.com:rp=raw:
In a large scale environment, especially a large environment where
some printers do not support PostScript, it may be useful to establish
a dedicated print server to which all machines print and on which all
ghostscript jobs are run.
10.7.1. To older HPs
Some printers (and printer networking "black boxes") support only a
cheesy little non-protocol involving plain TCP connections. Notable
in this category are early-model JetDirect (including some
JetDirectEx) cards. Basically, to print to the printer, you must open
a TCP connection to the printer on a specified port (typically 9100)
and stuff your print job into it. This can be implemented, among
other ways, in Perl:
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Thanks to Dan McLaughlin for writing the original version of this
# script (And to Jim W. Jones for sitting next to Dan when writing me
# for help ;)
$fileName = @ARGV[0];
open(IN,"$fileName") || die "Can't open file $fileName";
$dpi300 = "\x1B*t300R";
$dosCr = "\x1B&k3G";
$ends = "\x0A";
$port = 9100 unless $port;
$them = "bach.sr.hp.com" unless $them;
$AF_INET = 2;
$SOCK_STREAM = 1;
$SIG{'INT'} = 'dokill';
$sockaddr = 'S n a4 x8';
chop($hostname = `hostname`);
($name,$aliases,$proto) = getprotobyname('tcp');
($name,$aliases,$port) = getservbyname($port,'tcp')
unless $port =~ /^\d+$/;;
($name,$aliases,$type,$len,$thisaddr) =
gethostbyname($hostname);
($name,$aliases,$type,$len,$thataddr) = gethostbyname($them);
$this = pack($sockaddr, $AF_INET, 0, $thisaddr);
$that = pack($sockaddr, $AF_INET, $port, $thataddr);
if (socket(S, $AF_INET, $SOCK_STREAM, $proto)) {
# print "socket ok\n";
}
else {
die $!;
}
# Give the socket an address.
if (bind(S, $this)) {
# print "bind ok\n";
}
else {
die $!;
}
# Call up the server.
if (connect(S,$that)) {
# print "connect ok\n";
}
else {
die $!;
}
# Set socket to be command buffered.
select(S); $| = 1; select(STDOUT);
# print S "@PJL ECHO Hi $hostname! $ends";
# print S "@PJL OPMSG DISPLAY=\"Job $whoami\" $ends";
# print S $dpi300;
# Avoid deadlock by forking.
if($child = fork) {
print S $dosCr;
print S $TimesNewR;
while (<IN>) {
print S;
}
sleep 3;
do dokill();
} else {
while(<S>) {
print;
}
}
sub dokill {
kill 9,$child if $child;
}
10.8. Running an if for remote printers
One oddity of lpd is that the if is not run for remote printers. If
you find that you need to run an if, you can do so by setting up a
double queue and requeueing the job. As an example, consider this
printcap:
lj-5:remote-hplj:\
:lp=/dev/null:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lj-5:\
:if=/usr/lib/lpd/filter-lj-5:
lj-5-remote:lp=/dev/null:sh:rm=printer.name.com:\
:rp=raw:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lj-5-raw:
in light of this filter-lj-5 script:
#!/bin/sh
gs <options> -q -dSAFER -sOutputFile=- - | \
lpr -Plj-5-remote -U$5
The -U option to lpr only works if lpr is run as daemon, and it sets
the submitter's name for the job in the resubmitted queue correctly.
You should probably use a more robust method of getting the username,
since in some cases it is not argument 5. See the man page for
printcap.
11. How to print to a fax machine.
11.1. Using a faxmodem
There are a number of fax programs out there that will let you fax and
receive documents. One of the most complex is Sam Leffler's HylaFax,
available from ftp.sgi.com. It supports all sorts of things from
multiple modems to broadcasting.
Also available, and a better choice for most Linux boxen, is efax, a
simple program which sends faxes. The getty program mgetty can
receive faxes (and even do voicemail on some modems!).
11.2. Using the Remote Printing Service
There is an experimental service offered that lets you send an email
message containing something you'd like printed such that it will
appear on a fax machine elsewhere. Nice formats like postscript are
supported, so even though global coverage is spotty, this can still be
a very useful service. For more information on printing via the
remote printing service, see the FAQ
<http://www.town.hall.org/fax/faq.html>.
12. How to generate something worth printing.
Here we get into a real rat's-nest of software. Basically, Linux can
run four types of binaries with varying degrees of success: Linux,
iBCS, Win16/Win32s (with dosemu and, someday, with Wine), and Mac/68k
(with Executor). I'll just discuss native Linux and common Unix
software, except to say that WordPerfect for SCO, and quite probably
other commercial word processing software, runs fine under Linux's
iBCS emulation.
For Linux itself, choices are mostly limited to those available for
Unix in general:
12.1. Markup languages
Most markup languages are more suitable for large or repetative
projects, where you want the computer to control the layout of the
text to make things uniform. Trying to make a pretty sign in a markup
language would probably hurt...
nroff
This was one of the first Unix markup languages. Man pages are
the most common examples of things formatted in *roff macros;
many people swear by them, but nroff has, to me at least, a more
arcane syntax than needed, and probably makes a poor choice for
new works. It is worth knowing, though, that you can typeset a
man page directly into postscript with groff. Most man commands
will do this for you with man -t foo | lpr.
TeX
TeX, and the macro package LaTeX, are one of the most widely
used markup languages on Unix. Technical works are frequently
written in LaTeX because it greatly simplifies the layout issues
and is still one of the few text processing systems to support
mathematics both completely and well. TeX's output format is
dvi, and is converted to PostScript or Hewlett Packard's PCL
with dvips or dvilj.
SGML
There is at least one free sgml parser available for Unix and
Linux; it forms the basis of Linuxdoc-SGML's homegrown document
system. It can support other DTD's, as well.
HTML
Someone suggested that for simple projects, it may suffice to
write it in HTML and print it out using Netscape. I disagree,
but YMMV.
12.2. WYSIWYG
There is a general shortage of WYSIWYG text processing software. Feel
free to write some, and do let me know of anything I've omitted here.
LyX
LyX is a front-end to LaTeX which looks very promising. See the
LyX Homepage <http://www-pu.informatik.uni-
tuebingen.de/users/ettrich/> for more information.
The Andrew User Interface System
AUIS includes ez, a WYSIWYG-style editor with most basic word
processor features, HTML capabilities, and full MIME email and
newsgroup support.
Commercial offerings
At least Caldera and Red Hat ship packages containing the usual
office apps like a WYSIWYGish word processor and a spreadsheet.
I would assume they do a dandy job, but I've never used them. I
think Caldera also ships Sun's WABI, so you could probably run
something like MS Office under that if you had to integrate with
other folks' files.
Jeff Phillips <jeff@I_RATUS.org> uses Caldera's WordPerfect for
Linux (on Slackware, of all things) and says that it works well.
It apparently includes built-in printer support, as one would
expect. Caldera should have info on <http://www.caldera.com/>.
RedHat ships a suite called Applixware; you can find their web
site at <http://www.redhat.com/>.
Other vendors feel free to drop me a line with your offerings.
13. Ghostscript.
Ghostscript is an incredibly significant program for Linux printing.
Most printing software under Unix generates PostScript, which is
typically a $100-300 option on a printer. Ghostscript, however, is
free, and will generate the language of your printer from PostScript.
When tied in with your lpd input filter, it gives you a virtual
PostScript printer and simplifies life immensely.
Ghostscript is available in two forms. The commercial version of
Ghostscript, called Aladdin Ghostscript, may be used freely for
personal use but may not be distributed by commercial Linux
distributions. It is generally a year or so ahead of the free
Ghostscript; at the moment, for example, it supports Adobe Acrobat's
Portable Document Format, while the older Ghostscripts do not.
The free version of Ghostscript is GNU Ghostscript, and is simply an
aged version of Aladdin ghostscript kindly given to GNU. (Kudos to
Aladdin for this arrangement; more software vendors should support
free software in this way).
Ghostscript's main failing is in its fonts, which are derived from
bitmap scans of the characters. Superior, but commercially licensed
fonts may be obtained from several places, since Ghostscript can read
type 1 Adobe fonts. Adobe distributes useable fonts with their
Acrobat PDF reader, or you may use the fonts from Adobe's ATM or a
fontpack.
Whatever you do with gs, be very sure to run it with the option for
disabling file access (-dSAFER). PostScript is a fully functional
language, and a bad PostScript program could give you quite a
headache.
13.1. Ghostscript output tuning
There are a number of things one can do if gs's output is not
satisfactory (actually, you can do anything you darn well please,
since you have the source).
13.1.1. Output location and size
The location, size, and aspect ratio of the image on a page is
controlled by the printer-specific driver in ghostscript. If you find
that your pages are coming out scrunched too short, or too long, or
too big by a factor of two, you might want to look in your driver's
source module and adjust whatever parameters jump out at you.
Unfortunately, each driver is different, so I can't really tell you
what to adjust, but most of them are reasonably well commented.
13.1.2. Gamma, dotsizes, etc.
Most non-laser printers suffer from the fact that their dots are
rather large. This results in pictures coming out too dark. If you
experience this problem you should use your own transfer function.
Simply create the following file in the ghostscript lib-dir and add
its name to the gs call just before the actual file. You may need to
tweak the actual values to fit your printer. Lower values result in a
brighter print. Especially if your driver uses a Floyd-Steinberg
algorithm to rasterize colors, lower values ( 0.2 - 0.15 ) are
probably a good choice.
---8<---- gamma.ps ----8<---
%!
%transfer functions for cyan magenta yellow black
{0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} {0.3 exp} setcolortransfer
---8<------------------8<---
It is also possible to mend printers that have some kind of colour
fault by tweaking these values. If you do that kind of thing, I
recommend using the file colorcir.ps, that comes with ghostscript (in
the examples/ subdir), as a test page.
14. On-screen previewing of printable things.
Nearly anything you can print can be viewed on the screen, too.
14.1. PostScript
Ghostscript has an X11 driver best used under the management of the
PostScript previewer Ghostview. The latest versions of these programs
should be able to view PDF files, as well.
14.2. TeX dvi
TeX DeVice Independant files may be previewed under X11 with xdvi.
Modern versions of xdvi call ghostscript to render PostScript
specials.
A VT100 driver exists as well. It's called dgvt. Tmview works with
Linux and svgalib, if that's all you can do.
15. Credits
The smbprint information is from an article by Marcel Roelofs
<marcel@paragon.nl>.
The nprint information for using Netware printers was provided by
Michael Smith <mikes@bioch.ox.ac.uk>.
The serial printers under lpd section is from Andrew Tefft
<teffta@engr.dnet.ge.com>.
The blurb about gammas and such for gs was sent in by Andreas
<quasi@hub-fue.franken.de>.
The two paragraphs about the 30 second closing_wait of the serial
diver was contributed by Chris Johnson <cdj@netcom.com>.