Print PDF direct to printer

[Christoph Litauer]

Helge Blischke schrieb:
> Christoph Litauer wrote:
> 
>> Dear cups users,
>>
>> very often students complain about the time it takes to print some PDF
>> documents to our (fast) printers. I tracked that down to the following
>> situation:
>> - the documents printed are pdf converted ppt files with transparent
>> backgrounds or backgrounds with color gradients.
>> - the students print 2- or 4-up.
>> - they print from windows clients using the windows cups driver.
>>
>> Due to the fact that postscript isn't able to represent transparency or
>> color gradients, the generated postscript code is 40 to 50 times as big
>> as the pdf source. This postscript code is printed very slowly (up to
>> several minutes per page).
>> A workaround would be installing a PCL driver for theses printers. But
>> the resulting pcl code is nearly as big as the postscript code. When the
>> document is on the printer it is printed very fast, but the printing
>> process on the windows client takes lots of time (10-20 sec./page). So
>> this doesn't seem to be a sufficient solution.
>>
>> A better solution would be sending the PDF code directly to the printer
>> as the printer is able to print pdf and does this very fast.
>>
>> I wonder wether it would be possible to get a (possibly generic) windows
>> driver that doesn't convert the pdf documents to postscript or pcl.
>> Instead it should modify the PDF code as to use some printer special
>> features (input tray, duplex, color vs. greyscale etc.) and send pdf
>> code to the cups server. Then it would be easy to configure cups to
>> detect windows generated pdf code and send this code unmodified to the
>> backend.
>>
> 
> I'd sugest to install Peter Lerup's printfile on the windows boxes 
> (freeware) and configure that to pass through PDF files unmodified to the 
> cups server. Then insert into the PPDs of the rexpective PDF printers a line
> 
> *cupsFilter: "application/pdf 0 -"
> 
> As for job attributes like n-up printing and the like, I suspect you need to 
> rely on printers which understand IPP. If your PDF printers require some 
> other type of job ticket, please tell more about them. You could even 
> contact me off the list at h dot blischke at acm dot org.

Helge,

thanks for this suggestion! But for our student PCs this is not an
option, because I am not able to explain the usage of printFile to
thousands of students. printFile would be nice if it installs itself as
a (virtual) printer driver.

-- 
Kind regards
Christoph
________________________________________________________________________
Christoph Litauer                  litauer at uni-koblenz.de
Uni Koblenz, Computing Center,     http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~litauer
Postfach 201602, 56016 Koblenz     Fon: +49 261 287-1311, Fax: -100 1311
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