Accounting

[Michael Sweet]

ruans at minolco.co.za wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> 2 Questions.
> 
> I read that accounting is done by the printer driver by sending PAGE: and is listed in the log, this unfortunately gives only no. of pages and copies. Idealy you would like to have no. of copies no. black prints no. of colour prints and page sizes. i.e. If i print a doc and have 1 colour page 2 black pages in the doc, I would like to bill a department accordingly. Also A3 is billed as 2 A4 etc.
> 
> Q1.
> Is there a commen layer in the processing of prints where this info can be extracted? How/Where would I implement this?

There is not, at present, a way to extract this information in a
generic way.  You can provide your own backend, filter, driver, or
port monitor (new in CUPS 1.2) to scan the document being printed or
interrogate the printer for this information.

We have been working on a design to allow third-party accounting
plug-ins to support this sort of functionality, as well as general
quota support that is more complex than the basic support we
currently provide...

> Q2.
> Is there a way that documents can be stored like a mail box and then later released? How/Where would I implement this?

The job-hold-until attribute provides this functionality.  In CUPS
1.2 you can set the job-hold-until-default attribute using the
lpadmin command to hold all jobs by default, e.g.:

     lpadmin -p printername -o job-hold-until-default=indefinite

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