[cups.general] [ANNOUNCE] Tea4CUPS v1.00

[Jerome Alet]

Hi there,

I'm very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Tea4CUPS v1.00

What is Tea4CUPS ?

Tea is great companion for Cups.

Tea4CUPS is a 100% Python written standalone script distributed
under the terms of the GNU General Public License of the Free
Software Foundation. 

However Tea4CUPS is exclusively distributed for a 29.99 US$ fee.

Tea4CUPS is similar in functionnality to the *nix 'tee' command,
but available as a 100% plug and play generic CUPS backend.

Tea4CUPS captures print job's datas in their final form while they 
are being sent to a printer (more precisely to a CUPS backend,
and at the same time allows you to dispatch these datas to any
number of commands.

Tea4CUPS really obsoletes many specific backends like cups-pdf, 
since it can do this, and more. The only limit is your imagination.

To list some stupid examples :

  - Basic software accounting is available for ALL printers in ONE 
    single line of configuration in tea4cups.conf
    
  - Saving final job's datas once final rendering is done is 
    made super-easy by the possibility for Tea4CUPS to keep 
    working files on disk. This can be of great help while 
    debugging a CUPS setup.
    
  - Sending jobs to a printer while at the same time saving them  
    as PDF for archiving purposes and emailing them for good measure can 
    now be done in less than 5 minutes thanks to Tea4CUPS unprecedented 
    flexibility.
    
Tea4CUPS can be run either attached to a particular CUPS backend or not,  
depending on your needs : if you don't need to send the job's datas to
a real printer, just just Tea4CUPS alone.

To help your own commands, Tea4CUPS makes available as part of the
environment several variables which can be used as part of the
commands you use :

        TEAPRINTERNAME : The print queue name.
        TEADIRECTORY : Tea4CUPS output directory.
        TEADATAFILE : Full name of Tea4CUPS work file (in $TEADIRECTORY).
        TEAJOBSIZE : Job's size in bytes.
        TEAMD5SUM : MD5 sum of the job's datas.
        TEACLIENTHOST : Client's hostname or IP address.
        TEAJOBID : Job's Id.
        TEAUSERNAME : Name of the user who launched the print job.
        TEATITLE : Job's title.
        TEACOPIES : Number of copies requested.
        TEAOPTIONS : Options of the print job.
        TEAINPUTFILE : Print job's data file or empty when job read from stdin.
        
===================================================================  

Installation :
--------------

  0 - Download Tea4CUPS from :
  
        http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/Tea4CUPS/action_Presentation
        
      and extract it :  
      
        $ tar -zxf tea4cups-x.yy.tar.gz
        
        where x.yy is Tea4CUPS' version number.
        
  1 - Copy the 'tea4cups' command into CUPS' backend directory, 
      for example :
      
        $ cp tea4cups /usr/lib/cups/backend
        
  2 - Restart CUPS in order for this new backend to be detected.        
  
  3 - Either from CUPS' web interface, add new printers with 
      'Tea4CUPS managed' in front of the device's name.
          
      Or by directly modifying CUPS' printers.conf file, prepend    
      each DeviceURI value with 'tea4cups://', and restart CUPS.
      
  4 - Copy tea4cups.conf into CUPS' configuration directory (where    
      cupsd.conf resides) :
      
        $ cp tea4cups.conf /etc/cups/
        
  5 - Modify tea4cups.conf to suit your needs. Several examples      
      are included.
      
  6 - There's no 6 !    
  
===================================================================  

Troubleshooting : 
-----------------

  1 - Set "LogLevel debug2" in CUPS' cupsd.conf
  
  2 - Restart CUPS.
  
  3 - Set "debug: yes" in the [global] section of tea4cups.conf
  
  4 - Print something on a print queue managed
      by Tea4CUPS.
      
  5 - Look at CUPS' error_log file for diagnostic and error messages.
  
===================================================================  
  
You can learn more about Tea4CUPS or purchase it at :  

  http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/Tea4CUPS/action_Presentation
  
Hoping you'll all like this tool as much as I do.

bye, and thank you for reading

Jerome Alet