[conspire] [q1] (CUPS) thank yous

[Eric De Mund]

Rick,

Eric De Mund <ead at ixian.com>:
] q3:  Is CUPS now the preferred way to go, for printing? I need to
]      figure out printing. I have a NEC non-PostScript laser printer
]      (NEC SuperScript 870) directly connected to my system.

Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>:
] What did your distribution set up for you? Better to go with what they
] give you unless you really want to be a printer tweaking expert.

I selected CUPS at install-time (this is a Slackware 10.0.0 system), as
the other choice struck me as inappropriate for my situation. Unfortu-
nately, I cannot recall what the other choice was, but I believe its
flavor was more "standard" or "UNIX"y, implying that an LPD daemon would
be available on some other system or hardware device, which isn't the
case here, as (*) my printer isn't networked, and (*) my current broad-
band router has neither a parallel port interface nor a built-in LPD
daemon.

However, even though I'd selected it at install-time, I wanted to make
sure it was a good way to go.

Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>:
] Without a doubt.

Thank you. (-:

Ross Bernheim <rossbernheim at speakeasy.net>:
] I believe so, Apple even uses it for OS X. Is the 870 a PrintGear
] printer and reverts to plain Jane emulation of an HP Laserjet without
] NEC's old Windoze 95 or 98 driver?

Thank you. Yes. This printer is an "LJET2P"-compatible printer according
to NEC-SuperScript_870-ljet2p.ppd.

It turns out that this black and white SuperScript 870 laser printer
receives a "one penguin" rating at <http://www.linuxprinting.org/>:

    How well does it work?
    One Penguin: Partially. These printers mostly don't work; you may be
    able to print only in black and white on a color printer, or the
    printouts look horrible.

However, it *is* supported, and I only needed to change the permissions
of /dev/lp0 from 660 to 666:

    crw-rw-rw-  1 root lp 6, 0 Apr 27  1995 /dev/lp0

in order to get CUPS to display the parallel port as an option and to
get the thing working.

Happily, CUPS's lpr-cups(1) does permit me to print PostScript. Unhap-
pily, there's still some tweaking required to print from certain appli-
cations. In the Opera browser, for example, "File / Print..." doesn't
appear to work. And even "File / Print... / [x] Print to file" results
in PostScript files that have the right sides of some web pages trun-
cated.

However, again, basic printing is now working. Thank you, gentlemen, for
the CUPS-is-the-way-to-go confirmation.

Regards,
Eric
--
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to
succeed is always to try just one more time." --Thomas Edison

Eric De Mund              |   Ixian Systems, Inc.   | cell: 650.303.4336
email: <ead at ixian.com>    | 650 Castro St, #120-210 |  fax: 240.282.4443
http://www.ixian.com/ead/ | Mountain View, CA 94041 | Y!IM: ead0002