[cups.general] Re: incomplete PostScript print jobs

[Thomas J Pinkl]

Helge, thanks for your comments.


> Thomas J Pinkl wrote:
>> Here's a link to one such file:
>> 
>>   http://ftp.surfnet.nl/security/tcpwrappers/tcp_wrapper.ps.gz
>> 
>> When I try to print it, I get the first page and nothing more.


On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 06:56:25AM -0500, Helge Blischke wrote:
> Well, I got that file and - look, printing it with CUPS wasn't OK (CUPS
> 1.1.19).

What do you mean by "wasn't OK"?

> After massaging the file to be DSC conformant to a certain minimum, it
> printed perfectly.
> Following is a context diff of the hacked file against the original:

  [SNIP]

Did you edit the file "by hand" or do you have a program that inserts 
the DSC "comments" appropriately?

> You must know that CUPS feeds the PostScript code through the pstops
> filter to
> fill in the defaults defined for the respective printer and the PS code
> that
> implement the job options (attributes in IPP speech), and that requires
> a minimum
> of DSC conformance and page independence to succeed.
> 
> As in general it is hardly possible to get all PostScript creators to
> DSC
> conformance, I'd suggest to convert the weird PS files to PDF (e.g.
> using
> Ghostscript) and printing that PDF. With a little extra effort, you
> could
> configure CUPS ti do that automagically for you.

It seems odd to me that CUPS' pstops filter would _require_ DSC 
conformance when modern applications such as Mozilla do not produce 
such PostScript.  Is there a CUPS option to turn off DSC conformance
checking?

And having to convert PostScript to PDF and then back to PostScript 
seems wasteful at best.  I'd rather leave it as a raw queue.

-- 
Thomas J. Pinkl                         738 Louis Drive
Unix Systems Programmer                 Warminster, Pa 18974
Health Business Systems, Inc.           (215) 442-9300 x9260