[cups.general] PDFs do not Print

[Ambrose Li]

On 10/03/07, adfas asd <chimera_god at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> So you're saying that whether I print a pdf from the
> command-line, or from KPDF to the DSc38u, it will fail
> because there is no pdf to ps translator in between?

I mean if you are using raw printing and you get pages of
gibberish, it is to be expected.

For printing from KPDF, I am not sure what's happening;
I don't use KDE myself.

> This doesn't make sense, as I can print pdf's to my ps
> Laserjet4 from KPDF just fine.  And I can print to the
> office Gestetner 622 by pcl just fine, so there surely
> must be a pdf to pcl translation in there?  Why not
> pdf to ps translation for the 38?

I don't mean there is no filter in the normal case, but if
you try to print with the command you tried (the one with
the "-o raw"), you are explicitly telling CUPS to not use
any filter.

If you print to a PCL printer with CUPS normally (without
-o raw), the filters convert the PDF's to Postscript for you.

However, when you print a pdf using "lp ... -o raw", you are
telling CUPS to not use any filter and instead send the
PDF as-is. The printer is smart enough to figure that it is
not PostScript, but it is not smart enough to tell that it is not
PCL (because PCL files can contain anything). It just
assumes that the PDF is a giant PCL file and spits out
all the binary codes in the PDF as if they were PCL. That's
why you get pages and pages of gibberish.

With raw printing you are totally in control, but unfortunately
you also have to be very precise about what you feed to the
printer.

As for the case where you don't use -o raw and printing PDF's
still fails, others have pointed out that this is a filter problem.
For myself, I never print PDF's from the command line myself ;
I just don't trust the filters so much.

Sorry for being unclear in my last mail, I hope this one is clearer
 :-(
-- 
cheers,
-ambrose

PS: Don't trust everything you read in Wikipedia. (Very Important)