[cups.general] How to get a count of sheets used by a print job?

[Jerome Alet]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 03:26:26AM -0500, Mario Medina wrote:
> Hi! i'm using cups with linux as a print server for windows 
> machines. The windows are using IPP to print 
> (http://address:631/printers/printer), and i wish to control and log 
> the number of sheets of every job, to know how much paper and ink we 
> are using. 

For now, only PrintBill can compute ink used by print jobs, but
this project's support for CUPS is minimal. Also I fear it didn't
evolve much anymore.

> How can i do that? What file contains it?
> 
> PD: the server (cups) has raw printers, the driver is on the 
> windows machines, using PCL5 (or PCL6) from HP printers. 

Also PrintBill can only do its computation with PostScript jobs.

For now, if you want to know how much ink you use, you have to
either improve PrintBill or change your printer drivers.

If you don't care so much about ink for now, I'd suggest
that you use pkpgcounter, which is available from :

        http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/
        
It can count pages in a number of formats, including PCLXL 
(aka PCLXL) and PCL5 (although for this one it may depend on the 
driver being used). It's latest development version also contains 
some code to compute ink usage like PrintBill does, but this is not
yet ready for production use, so for now use the latest stable
release.

If you need a complete print accounting solution ala PrintBill, 
which pkpgcounter is not, you'll find PyKota on the same website. 

hth

Jerome Alet