Specifying text file encoding to lpr/lp?

[Helge Blischke]

John A. Murdie wrote:
> Is it possible to specify the encoding of a file to be printed with lpr(1)/lp(1)? What is the default encoding for text printing? (I can't see anything under the CUPS web printer management 'Set Printer Options' page for a printer, and the manual pages say nothing.)
> 
> Of course, once I know the default encoding, I can use iconv(1) or piconv(1) to do the necessary translation.
> 
> As an experiment, I tried printing (CUPS 1.3.7) an ISO 8859-1 text file containing an umlaut - the printing stopped with the character before the umlaut. Bug or misconfiguration on my part?
> 
> John A. Murdie

Look at the texttops wrapper published on the CUPS web site (see the links). The wrapper tries
to guess the used encoding from the text itself and supplies an option to
explicitely specify the encoding.

Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung

H.Blischke at acm.org