[cups.general] (long) Filter script on raw printer?

[Tim Pushor]

Hi all,

First of all , I am very new to cups and Linux. Also I hope that this 
isn't too common a question - I've searched the web but havn't found 
anything conclusive.

I am using Suse Linux 9.0 with the version of cups that comes with that 
release (1.1.19-75). I have created my printers with the included gui 
tools. I needed to create the printers driverless (raw) to get our 
application to print properly.

This application is a SCO application that we are porting to Linux. It 
is a BASIC interpreter.

The problem that we are having is it seems that using the HP/Jetdirect 
printer driver stuff for SCO handled ensuring that the output lines were 
terminated with cr/lf properly. Printing through this new raw printer 
doesn't work properly.

I took a print job from our application and sent it through a perl 
script I wrote to ensure proper EOL termination, and then printed that 
job via cups via lpr and it printed properly.

So now I would like a way to get this script working as a filter on this 
raw printer. I have tried a few things trying to get this script to 
fire, with no luck. At this point I really just want to prove that *a* 
script is firing with every print job, but can't seem to even get that far.

This is what I did:

Use the printing manager built in to Suse 9.0 (Utilities -> Printing -> 
Printing manager)

 - Add Printer/Class
 - Backend Selection: Network Printer (TCP)
 - Set printer address properly
 - Printer Model Selection: Raw Printer (No driver needed)
 - Set printer name to something
 - everything else default

Now the printer prints, with the linefeed problem.

So I click on the printer in the printer manager, click the instances 
tab, click the settings button, and click the 'filters' tab
I click the funnel icon, and make a new filter and call it AutoLinefeed. 
I set both the supported input mime type  format to all/all and output 
format all/all. Then I click 'edit command' and set the command to 
autolf.pl %filterinput %filteroutput. I set input from File to %in and 
pipe to -. I set the output the same.

I put this script in /usr/bin and before it does anything (like command 
line validation) it logs that it has run. I never see this happening.

Now, I know that the real solution is to fix the application, but 
unfortunately the BASIC programs that our interpreter is going to 
'execute' have been compiled (actually just pre-tokenized) and we don't 
have easy access to the BASIC source. So previous BASIC programmers have 
created some of the programs to use proper EOL termination, and some 
don't ( I guess depending on what kind of print software was installed 
on the SCO system and the make/model of target printer). So my script 
here is ideal - it just strips ANY EOL characters and puts the right 
ones on for the target printer. I would really like to get this firing 
for EVERY print job to a particular printer. Is this possible?

Thanks for any help..

Tim