[cups.general] Page Width Option

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Tran, Vince T wrote:

> Sorry to bother you, but could you elaborate a little more? 

CUPS is uses PostScript as the central hub format for printing. What
your post implies is that you are basically sending ASCII text files
and you want a way to control the width of the lines on the page.

CUPS automatically converts all text into PostScript, using its own
"texttops" filter. That filter supports options like "prettyprint=true",
"page-top=22", "page-left=33", "page-bottom=41", "page-right=12" (for
margins), "lpi=5.8" (lines per inch) and "cpi=8.7" (characters per
inch), but not "width".

Now, if your ASCII is more like an early version of PCL, it will have
embedded a few control/escape sequences, which the texttops filter
will not like.

However, the legacy "interface" scripts used on ancient $unix* systems
were perfectly capable of handling that input and converting it into
$whatever_your_target_printer likes. (You just cannot use any other
filter, or a PPD with the same print queue; every conversion you'd
need to do needs to be scripted into the interface script).

So, CUPS supports the installation of interface-script driven print
queues, using the exactly same interface script you used before, simi-
lar to:

   lpadmin -p printername \
          [-L "Building 7 -- 2nd Floor" ] \
          [-D "LaserJet driven by interface script ] \
          [-o some.other.supported.option=value ] \
           -v socket://ip_address \
           -E \
           -i /path/to/interface-script.sh \

About some general ideas about interface scripts (in case you don't
know them), see

  http://playground.sun.com/printing/documentation/interface.html

So, in CUPS (which uses as a hub jobformat PostScript, and PPDs for
controlling job options) there is a backward-compatible way to sup-
port migration from legacy System V systems (I know Solaris doesn't
exactly use a System V printing system, but it still can be made to
support it).

> Use lpadmin 
> with -i option when creating print queue?  Thanks.
>
>
> Vince Tran
> Emory University AAIT
> 404.727.5350
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cups-bounces at easysw.com [mailto:cups-bounces at easysw.com] On Behalf Of Kurt Pfeifle
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 1:40 PM
> To: cups at easysw.com
> Subject: Re: [cups.general] Page Width Option
> 
> Tran, Vince T wrote:
>> We’ve recently migrated from Solaris 9 to RHEL 4, but lpr in CUPS
>> doesn’t support a very important option used here in our shop – width
>> option.  In Sol 9, one can send lpr with –w option for width of page,
>> but one can no longer do this in CUPS.  I’ve seen a lot of options in
>> CUPS, but there’s not one to where you can specify the page width.  Has
>> anyone find a way to do this?  Thanks.
> 
> You can use your interface scripts from Solaris in CUPS too (or create
> a new one that supports your -w option SystemV-style...).
> 
> See "man lpadmin". Install interface scripts with the "-i" option to
> lpadmin when creating the print queue.


-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany