Printing With CUPS
Summary:
Printing II
- From Applications
- Netscape
- Star Office
- KDE
- GIMP
- GV
Printing II
Printing from applications
You can print documents from many Linux applications. In most cases you have to enter the appropriate print command somewhere in the "Print" or "Printing Setup" dialog.
The "lpr" command is compatible to LPD's, and thus the
lpr
lpr
When you click on the "OK" or the "Print" button of the printing dialog now, 'xpp' or '~QtCUPS' will pop up and you can choose the printer and set the options as described earlier.
Please note that the application often does not redraw its window as long as you have 'xpp' or '~QtCUPS' open. This can lead to strange effects when moving their dialog windows, but as soon as you have sent your printing job these effects will disappear.
Netscape
In 'Netscape' you click on the printer symbol and the printing dialog shows up. Enter
xpp
qtcups
Star Office
'Star Office' is a bit more difficult to set up for printing with 'xpp' or '~QtCUPS'. At first you have to quit a running 'Star Office'. Then switch to the 'root' account and type:
xpp
This will open a dialog window. In it set up a queue with the "Generic Printer" driver (CUPS takes care of the ~PostScript rendering, so no special driver is needed) and
qtcups
/opt/office52/program/spadmin &
Usually you just accept the default entry ("Generic Printer in queue default_queue (/usr/bin/lpr)") and click on "Connect". Then replace
xpp
qtcups
/usr/bin/lpr
xpp
qtcups
Neither do you need to set up a queue for every printer you want to use, nor do you need to select appropriate drivers for your printers, nor do you need to change anything when you connect a new printer. With the queue using the
xpp
qtcups
xpp
When you run 'Star Office' now, just do the printing as usual, but choose your newly configured queue as "Printer". This will bring up dialog of the graphical CUPS tool you have chosen and the rest will be easy.
KDE
All 'KDE' applications, whether they are part of 'KOffice' or not, share the same printing dialog. It is one of the few printing dialogs which show a list of available printers so you can choose the printer with a single mouse click.
But unfortunately, this dialog is heavily fitted to LPD: The printing command has been hard-coded to
qtcups
Note: Do not remove or comment out the
spadmon
GIMP
Printing in 'GIMP' is very different from printing in other applications due to the GIMP-Print plug-in. When you click on your artwork with the right mouse button and choose "File" and then "Print" in the pop-up menu, you get a rather large dialog window.
To set up your printing job, you should start choosing the queue of your printer in the "Printer" field. Then click the "Setup" button at the right of the "Printer" field to choose the driver for your printer. Here you have two possibilities, you can either choose "~PostScript Level 2" and remove the
lpr -P {printer}
Printcap /etc/printcap
-oraw
lpr
xpp
qtcups
gv (~GhostView)
The ~PostScript previewer
-oraw
To change this default command permanently to
-oraw
gv
From now on, clicking on "Print All" or "Print Marked" brings up the dialog of the desired printing tool.
You can even have a printing preview in almost all applications if you enter
xpp
qtcups
gv
Related Resources:
See Resources on article index
Modified: Nov 20, 2000
Author: Till Kamppeter
Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft.
Version 1.3 last modified by AdminWiki on 22/03/2004 at 09:44
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