[cups.general] can I use CUPS without ghostscript?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 14 February 2006 07:36, Mangoo wrote:
>Is it possible to use CUPS without ghostscript?
>
>I'm trying to set up a printing system on an embedded device, so I
> have limited RAM and space.

I don't believe so, at least not with moderm, mostly GDI printers.  It 
might be possible to print to an old dot matrix or daisy wheel with the 
-o raw option though.  But this would not do any graphics at all on the 
daisy, and very limited on the dmp.  The dmp will be higher maintainace 
over time and there are a few of those still available, I saw an Oki 
321 at Office Max the other day, brand new.  It can do straight text, 
and emulate either a limited set of escp2 or IBM ProPrinter modes.  
Parport drive normally, there may still be serial and ethernet cards 
available for it.  Daisy stuff I haven't seen in ages although I have a 
couple of very old ones.  Slow, expensive ribbons are its achilles 
heels.  Fastest one ever, at 40 cps, was a Xerox 1650-ro, I have one 
but it was several thousand when it was new in the 70's, I got it used.  
Its a hockey puck, and I think it will still work today if I pull it 
out of the shed.

Ghostscript and enscript are pretty much parts of the cups system, 
helping to convert it into a universal, gobbles up anything, printing 
system.

If possible, could you setup a seperate printer server machine on a 
network and use that?  But the tcp stack for the network is also going 
to eat into resources, so depending on what you've got, that might not 
be doable either.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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