Practicalites of non-DSC-conformant PostScript

[Michael Sweet]

John A. Murdie wrote:
>> Michael Sweet wrote:
>>
>> John A. Murdie wrote:
>>> ...
>>> My guess is that pstops(1) is destroying non-DSC-conformant
>>> PostScript. ...
>> It might be CID fonts being embedded without the proper encoding.
> 
> Certainly CID fonts are involved, but I don't know what you mean by "embedded without the proper encoding". The pstops (?) processed file appears to have had the `Pscript_CMap_FF 5.0' resource which defines CMAP-WinCharSetFFFF-H edited out, so that the later call of that routine fails.
> 
>> Does this happen with all applications or just specific apps/documents?
> 
> Almost all documents print ok. One that doesn't is a print of a Galileo ViewTrip travel reservation from Mozilla Firefox on Windows XP. This system was an experiment to have Windows XP desktop clients print directly to CUPS, without Samba as an intermediary.
> 
>> Are you using drivers exported by Samba via cupsaddsmb or the CUPS
>> web interface, or are you using the vendor drivers (which are also
>> usually based on PSCRIPT5.DLL)?
> 
> I'm using the latest standard Windows XP driver for this printer, and the PPD file for the printer that came from
> http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/PPD/HP/color_laser/

More than likely you could also tweak the PostScript options on the
advanced settings dialog to generate portable PostScript.

Another option is the (free) ESP Print Pro client for Windows from:

     http://www.easysw.com/printpro/software.php

This program runs on the Windows box and handles adding printers that
print directly using IPP using the PPD file from the CUPS server.

>>> What can one do about this in general? ...
>> Some folks setup Samba to print using the "raw" or
>> "document-format=application/vnd.cups-raw" options; this bypasses
>> the usual filtering without resorting to a separate queue.  The down
>> side is that you lose page accounting...
> ...
> I wonder - and I feel an RFE coming on - if CUPS might have a
 > configuration feature whereby a range of client IP addresses can be
 > marked as being clients whose submissions should always be treated in
 > `raw' mode. This would fix the current problem.

You can play with the application/vnd.cups-raw MIME type definition
(or add your own .types file with additional rules) to flag the output
from the Windows clients as raw...

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