How to force letter printing of A4 postscript

[Daniel Kasak]

unruh at physics.ubc.ca wrote:
> I have an HP 2300 printer, and, since I live in Canada, we only have Letter size paper. Unfortunately being a university, we get articles from Europe who keep producing postscript files in A4 format. This is hopeless, as the printer keeps demanding that we load in A4 paper and sits there waiting (you cannot cancel the job because some bug in the printer keeps reprinting the first page forever if you cancel.)
> 
> Ie, I want ALL documents to be converted to letter size. No matter what the ps document says, I want letter output. However this seems to be impossible under cups. I have removed all references to A4 in the ppd file for the printer, removed the /etc/cups/ppds.dat and restarted cups, but still this A4 stuff goes on. Sometimes in fact the print job will change the default on the printer itself to A4 from letter.
> 
> How in the world to I ensure that cups changes everything to letter size?
> (Yes, I have DefaultSize as letter and all other defaults as letter in the ppd files.)
> 
> 

So *you're* responsible for all those damned Letter-sized documents that 
always lock up my A4 printers :)

In the config page of my Laserjet4500, under 'Options Installed', I've 
got 'Paper Matching', which allows me to select:

- Prompt user for correct size
- Nearest size & scale
- Nearest size & crop

I don't know whether this is a feature of the print, of CUPS, or of 
something else.

First, check whether you have an option like this. If you do, try it. I 
haven't tried it - I prefer to get people to set all their documents to 
the proper default, as the resize option makes people lazy, and only 
works on some printers.

If you don't have this option, try finding a Laserjet4500 ppd and 
searching the thing for this config option - I can send you ours if you 
can't find one. It's *possible* that shoving one into your existing ppd 
will give you the option, and that the option will work. Of course, I've 
already said that I don't know how it works ...

Dan