[cups.general] print .doc with lp

Helge Blischke h.blischke at srz.de
Thu May 31 04:24:29 PDT 2007


Paul Ortman wrote:
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> Nathan Wheeler wrote:
> 
>>I'm trying to print a MS .doc just by using `lp -d printer file.doc`, 
>>but it doesn't print the document, just some garbled text. I can print 
>>just fine from word or openoffice, but not command line. Is there a way 
>>to do this? Do I need to change mime.types or mime.convs or any filters? 
>>Maybe I could convert the file first, like to PS or an image. Any advice?
> 
> 
> You hit the nail on the head.  You'd be best served by converting the
> .doc to PS and then printing that via lp.  There are a number of
> converters our there (all with some limitation), but you might try
> experimenting creating a simple "printdoc" script that uses something
> like Abiword scripting to load the given .doc and then print the file
> file out in PS format.
> 
> # abiword -p '| lpr -P myprinter' somedocument.doc
> 
> It won't be perfect in all cases, but it might be good enough for you.
> 
> There are probably a lot of other options out there that might use some
> other .doc capable program, like OpenOffice, but I'll leave the Googling
> up to you.
> 
> I imagine you could even hook something like this command up in a custom
> CUPS filter, but since it will never really print exactly like Word
> formats it, it will be a bit disappointing to those who can't appreciate
> the technical difficulty of printing .doc files without documentation.
> 
> - --
> Paul Ortman
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There is a way to use OpenOffice.org to act in the background
to support a special CUPS filter to do that. As this is a bit tricky
to set up, I hesitated to publish it on the CUPS web site's links.
Contact me off the list if you need it.

Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung

H.Blischke at acm.org




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