Integration with Pharos Uniprint

[Ian Chard]

Michael Sweet wrote:
> Ian Chard wrote:
>>
>> 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.
> 
> [...]
> 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.

Unfortunately the applications aren't ours :(

> 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.

This is exactly what I'd like to do.  I'll have a play with backends
and see what I can come up with.

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

Thankfully not!

Thanks for the pointer
- Ian

-- 
Ian Chard, Unix & Network Administrator   |  E: ian.chard at sers.ox.ac.uk
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