[cups.general] Adding a driver for a pseudo-printer

[Jerome Alet]

Hi,

On Sat, Feb 09, 2008 at 12:16:17PM -0800, Daniel Birns wrote:
> 
> We don't have a printer, per se.  Instead we want our program to  
> receive the bitmap/raster image, and send that over the net to our  
> process running somewhere else, where it may print it or do something  
> else with it.
> 
> We're doing this on the mac for now, but we may want it on other cups- 
> supported platforms later.
> 
> I could use some help getting going with this, as there's a lot to  
> learn.  If someone could simply outline the steps involved, it would  
> be a great help.
> 
> From what I've read thus far, my impression is that I have to make a  
> ppd file for our printer, which would specify our filter.  There's a  
> lot that I don't understand even in that summary.
> 
> I also have one question:  Can a filter become the end-of-the-line,  
> so that the backend is not invoked?  Do I do this by simply  
> outputting nothing?  Is there a standard way of supporting a pseudo- 
> printer?

Look at the different messages about tea4cups sent to this
mailing list yesterday. Simply use tea4cups:// as your
pseudo printer's Device URI and then plug into it any shell script
or executable which will only take care of sending the print
job's datas to wherever you want. No need to modify or create
a PPD, no need to write a filter.

hth

Jerome Alet