CUPS 1.2.7: definitions in .convs and .types not working

[Michael Leimann]

Hello to everyone!

We are facing a problem with a CUPS filter script that we are unable to fix.

Szenario:

We have a CUPS-Server 1.2.7 (cups-1.2.7-12.7, cups-libs-1.2.7-12.7, cups-backends-1.0-43, cups-drivers-1.2.7-7, cups-client-1.2.7-12.7, libgnomecups-0.2.2-46)

- openSUSE 10.2
- kernel 2.6.18.8-0.7

installed and running fine.

In /usr/lib/cups/filter we have defined a script that is meant to mix printing with our letterhead:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root    root   1440  9. Jan 11:00 withform

#! /bin/bash
# see http://localhost:631/spm.html#WRITING_FILTERS
# debug info in /var/log/cups/error_log
set -x
# set inputfile to where the input comes from
inputfile="-"
[ -n "$6" ] && inputfile="$6"
# does /tmp/print exist?
outputfile=`ls -al /tmp | grep "^d"  | cut -d ":" -f 2 | cut -b 4- | grep "print"`
if [ "$outputfile" == "" ]; then
   mkdir /tmp/print
fi
# define outputfile
outputfile=`date "+%Y%m%d%H%M%S"`
# piping printjob in one file per page
gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=/tmp/print/$outputfile-%03d.ps $inputfile
#combining pages with overlay
for pagefile in /tmp/print/$outputfile-*
do
  page=`echo $pagefile | cut -d "-" -f 2 | cut -d "." -f 1`
  if [ "$pagefile" = "/tmp/print/$outputfile-001.ps" ]; then
     # 1. page
     overlay="/usr/lib/cups/filter/letterhead1.eps"
     else
        # all other pages
        overlay="/usr/lib/cups/filter/letterhead2.eps"
  fi
  # printing, EPS comes first, because it clears the page!
  gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=/tmp/print/tmp-$outputfile.ps $overlay $pagefile
  /usr/bin/pstops "2:0(0,0)+1(0,0)" /tmp/print/tmp-$outputfile.ps /tmp/print/final-$outputfile-$page.ps > /dev/null 2>&1
  rm $pagefile
  rm /tmp/print/tmp-$outputfile.ps
done
cat /tmp/print/final-$outputfile*ps
rm /tmp/print/final-$outputfile-*.ps
# for tracing purposes
echo "WITHFORM $(date)" | tee -a /var/log/cups/error_log


When using

*cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-postscript 0 withform"

in a printer specific PPD file, we get the output printed as intended.

To be able to use this on all our printers, we don't want to use the way via the PPD file. We want do include something like

#Form:...

in the printout we intend to search for the "#Form:" statement. Later we want the filter script to select pre defined EPS forms from the "..." extension of the statement.

Therefore in /etc/cups we have defined

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 184 14. Jan 09:39 form-ps.convs

########################################################################
#
# PostScript filters
#

application/form-ps     application/postscript 33      /usr/lib/cups/filter/withform


and

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 178 14. Jan 09:41 form-ps.types

########################################################################
#
# Application-generated files...
#

application/form-ps             contains(0,900000,"<23466F726D3A")


We have played around with different detection methods in form-ps.types and different application settings (e.g. application/vnd.cups-postscript) in form-ps.convs. We had included such lines in mime.convs and mime.types, even though this is not the suggested way. Of course we have restarted CUPS whenever we made changes. Under no circumstances our filter script was used by cups.

Any suggestions. What are we doing wrong?

Regards

Michael