Integration with Pharos Uniprint

[Michael Sweet]

Ian Chard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to get CUPS working with Pharos Uniprint, which (in our
> configuration) needs the user to specify a job name.  This name is then
> used by the user to identify their job when they go to a release station
> to pay for it.
> 
> As far as I can tell, all I need to do is give an argument to -J on the
> lpr command line.  However, I'd like to pop up a dialog box to prompt
> for the job name when the user sends it from the application.  I've
> written a little hack to do this, but I need to know where in CUPS to
> insert a hook to call this program and set the job name to that given
> by the user.
> 
> I know it's kind of hacky to pop up dialog boxes from the printing
> system, but the machines I'm going to be running this on will only ever
> have one user logged on, and they will always be on the console.
> 
> Any help gratefully appreciated.

Well, in general this just won't work.

The IPP job-name attribute is included by all of the command-line
tools, either using the basename of the first file you are printing,
"stdin" for piped input, or using the job name supplied on the
command-line.

If all of your applications are printing via lp or lpr, you can
modify those programs to provide a GUI to collect the job name.

If you are using KDE or recent GNOME applications, then the jobs
are submitted directly via IPP and you are going to have a much
harder time intercepting the print jobs.

Once it gets to the printing system, the only user that stands a
chance of opening a window is root, which is (by default) the user
that backends use.  It is conceivable that you could write a backend
which pops up the GUI and then forwards the job to the appropriate
backend with the new job name argument.

However, if you have any kind of xauth stuff enabled, that likely
will not work, either... :(

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