in-postscript media-type request -- workaround

blinkety bill printers at ph.unimelb.edu.au
Fri Oct 13 00:21:12 PDT 2006


OK, I found that the media and duplexing option requests were being stripped no matter what, and I don't have the option right now to play around replacing pstops or upgrading.

I suspect the stripping occurs perhaps as late in the CUPS system as the /usr/lib/cups/backend/lpd sending off the job to the printer. I have no real basis for this suspicion, but I found in testing that pstops did *not* strip the feature requests, and I also know that the feature requests have the correct effect if the postscript is given to the printer. lpd seems to be the only thing in between those points in my configuration.

But CUPS is pretty convuluted, I don't know intimately what happens inside :) I could be quite wrong.

The printers were configured on the CUPS server such that the CUPS server should do processing, which is intended to be so that linux clients sending non-postscript jobs via lpd would print.

I have since learnt that our linux PCs are being configured with CUPS local, so this function of the server is not needed. It seems that the printers can be set up as RAW queues on CUPS, so CUPS on the server really is just accepting jobs, spooling them, logging them, and feeding them to the printer.

Probably the way it should be.

Both the linux clients and the Windows clients have their own local print drivers making what they print into postscript (or so I am assured).

So on the Windows clients I install the native driver of the printer just as if it was printing direct to the printer (even using the PCL driver where the vendor's (ahem) "postscript" driver crashes), and give it the http:// address of the printer, and it works adequately. I put down the remaining issues to poor drivers (ahem) ;) It would be nice if I could have solved those issues by using CUPS, but for now, this is good enough.

I will continue to dream of a perfect CUPS system with explicite debug points and no unecessary stripping of job control features, which provides a perfect generic driver that actually works and has all the features of the vendor drivers but provides what they lack: a consistent simple interface without unecessary overhead!

btw FYI The cups postscript driver being used with these raw queues, I found, worked OK except if I tried to specify a tray other than 'automatic', the printer pretended no job was received. And it provides no 'media' option.

Thanks for your help and patience. :)

Blinkety Bill


> > blinkety bill wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have a problem trying to print to transparency using Xerox print driver via CUPS.
> >
> > What version of CUPS are you using?
> >
> > When you say you are using the Xerox print driver via CUPS, do you
> > mean you are using the Xerox Windows printer driver and printing the
> > resulting file through CUPS?  If so, how is the queue configured on
> > your CUPS system right now?
>
> Please see previous replies, but here is where the PPDs came from, for anyone who is interested.
>
> http://www.support.xerox.com/go/results.asp?Xtype=download&prodID=4400&Xlang=en_US&Xcntry=USA&source=XOG
>
> I guess you choose 'Linux' from the list ... (was someone else who got this for me)
>
> Simeon
>
> > --
> > ______________________________________________________________________
> > Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
> > Internet Printing and Document Software          http://www.easysw.com
>





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