PDFs Do Not Print

[Kurt Pfeifle]

> --- Kurt Pfeifle <kpfeifle at danka.de> wrote:
> >   dpkg -l xpdf-utils poppler-utils xpdf poppler
>
> pn  poppler-utils  <none>         (no description available)
> ii  xpdf           3.01-9         Portable Document Format (PDF) suite
> ii  xpdf-utils     3.01-9         Portable Document Format (PDF) suite -- uti
>
> I've done a search of /usr for pdftops and find only
> two executables:
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 753480 2006-07-14 23:25 /usr/bin/pdftops* (installed by xpdf-utils)
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5628 2007-02-02 05:20 /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops* (installed by cupsys)
> .... notice the major difference in size between them?

This is the "problem" that Debian uses not the CUPS-provided pdftops, but a wrapper script (Perl?) that runs the original XPDF-pdftops, but adapted to the conventions CUPS expects for its filters.

You can ask your system what kind of file that pdftops is by typing

   file /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops

> I have no idea which the system is actually using.

CUPS uses its own version of pdftops as a filter (be it the "CUPS-native" or the Debian wrapper for the "XPDF original"). The CUPS-native is also derived from the xpdf pdftops-code; but it is usually not available for users to run from the commandline [which only a few people would ever want to do, mainly for debugging CUPS filtering problems] it requires a special syntax for its parameters).

If your run

   pdftops some.pdf some.ps

it will be the /usr/bin/pdftops that you run. [You can ask your system for the path, by typing "which pdftops"].

If you are printing a PDF directly to CUPS from the commandline, like so:

   lp -d <printername> /path/to/some.pdf

the PDF goes to CUPS, and CUPS uses its own pdftops to convert (and, depending on the final printer, it may run even more filters to do other conversions from the PostScript).

> > Well, I don't have access to a Debian system; but I
> > don't even know if you mentioned the Debian version
> > you're running.
>
> Sorry, but there are always complaints about not
> -enough- detail. (rightfully)

??

I don't get that comment.