[cups.development] Brother Label Printer, partial driver, need help

[Michael Sweet]

Thomas Seiler wrote:
> ...
> Could someone give me a pointer for these questions:
> - How to write a ppd that contains the different label sizes that are
> supported by the printer or else how to disable the centering of the
> label inside the a4 page ?

See dymo.ppd and zebra.ppd for examples; mainly you need to define
PageSize, PageRegion, PaperDimension, and ImageableArea for every
size.  This is made much simpler by using the PPD compiler that
comes with the (free) CUPS Driver Development Kit (DDK).

> - How can I add a the contiguous paper option, where the label length
> is determined by the printed label size ?

You can't - there is absolutely no support for undefined media sizes.

You can, however, specify that the printer supports variable paper
sizes and provide the minimum and maximum sizes that are supported.

> - I have seen the cutter yes / no directive for ppds. How can I access
> the setting inside rastertodymo in order to send the right commands ?

The CutMedia attribute in the header controls this - see the CUPS 1.2
version of rastertodymo.c for an example of this.

> - What is the cups way of witing drivers that do bi-directional
> communication with the printer ?

In 1.2 you use the cupsBackchannelRead() function.  In 1.1 you need
to write a custom backend.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com