[cups.general] Call a GUI application from cups filter while printing

Till Kamppeter till.kamppeter at gmail.com
Thu Dec 6 16:02:06 PST 2007


Debashis wrote:
> Hi,
> I am trying to pop up a dialog window where the user can enter a passcode to validate his job for Job accounting purposes on Ubuntu Linux OS.
> I know that cups calls your filter if you specify the name in the PPD file, but will it be possible to call a GUI application (For example: created using QT) from the filter, accept the users input and then continue with the printing by writing the data to the stdout.
> 
> In MacOS we use custom PDE for this purpose, but how do we do it in Linux. Any suggestion will be very much appreciated.

If you do not have the situation of client and server being different 
machines you could use DBUS to let a process running as the user lp (the 
CUPS filter) initiate/trigger a program running as the owner of the 
desktop (the password dialog, to be filled in by the user who has sent 
the job). It gets more difficult and I do not know whether Linux has 
appropriate infrastructure, if the job gets sent from a remote machine, 
or a local user sends a job but is not owner of the desktop (he logged 
in by SSH or he is running a cron job), A machine can also have more 
than one desktop (when using VNC, NX, or simply more than one monitor).

    Till





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