[cups.general] Need howto for pdf "printer"

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net> wrote (Tuesday 13 June 2006 07:41):

> I'd like to have the ability for anyone on a business network consisting
> of a scrambled egg mix of linux and windows boxes of various versions,
> so that each user has available a 'print to pdf' printer he can print
> to, and when he does this, the resultant pdf that cups makes is returned
> to his machine/homedir.
> 
> Is this possible? 

Yes. (...and there are dozens of solutions and hacks out there to 
help with that).

> And if so, where can we find the howto? 

One of the most "accessible" ones for non-coders (because it uses
a simple shell script only), you can find at

  "PDF Distiller Script":
   http://printing.kde.org/downloads/

You have to use it in combination with a generic PostScript printer
PPD for your PDF print queue.

OK, it does not do everything you want it to do: it does not cover
Windows clients, and it does not put the resulting PDFs into the
$HOME dir of $CLIENT.

You'll have to extend the script:

 * combine it with Samba and "cupsaddsmb" to provide a Windows
   PostScript driver for the Windows clients, and allow them to
   print to the PDF printer

 * add functionality to the pdf backend script that stores the
   end result in a separate directory owned by the user (which
   you'll probably mount as a network drive to the Windows user's
   machine).

> Thanks.

Cheers,
Kurt