GUI to specify device dependant features

Theodoor Bongers qtb at oce.nl
Thu Jun 17 00:14:02 PDT 2004


Hi there,

I'm developing a CUPS-driver for a postscript printer. It has it's own PPD file, so most device dependent features are accessible through frontends like kprinter (or at least through the CUPS web-interface). There are some more options I would like my driver to support, but it's not possible to describe them in the PPD file. What I actually want, is to show the user a GUI to offer the full range of features. I understand that it's not CUPS' responsibility.

Can anyone please tell me what's the easiest way to do what I need to do? I suppose it's bad to show a GUI from within a CUPS filter? The KDEPrint framework under linux provides a nice way to do some pre-filtering with a user interface, but that would only solve the problem for KDE applications. Isn't there a better way to achieve this? Would it be an idea to replace the lp and lpr binaries, show the GUI when lp or lpr is called, set the options in ~/.lpoptions and pass the call to the original lp/lpr binary? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,
Theodoor Bongers




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