[cups.general] convert an printjob in a raw_printerqueue

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Sep 30 10:39 Christian wrote (shortened):
> But,my only way is to script a backend or put in the ppd files
> for printers on the printing server the "*cupsfilter" line?!

Do not confuse CUPS backends and CUPS filters.
Regardless that both have almost the same interface
how they are called, their purpose is different, see
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell
and "man 7 filter" and "man 7 backend".

Because any print queue must have at least a backend,
you could make an all-in-one filter+backend script
but then you must implement both all the filtering
plus sending the data to the printer in your script.
But why don't you use at least one of the ready-made
provided CUPS backends to send the data to the printer?
And why don't you use the ready-made provided CUPS filters
as usual via PPD files for usual printer models - except
you have really a very special case?


You have the following three mutual excluding choices
how you can set up filtering for a print queue, see
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell

A "raw" queue (i.e. no filtering at all) via:
# lpadmin -p queue_name -v device_URI -E

Using a "System V style Interface Script" (a single all-in-one
script or program which must do all filtering) via:
# lpadmin -p queue_name -v device_URI -i /path/to/your/script -E
which lets the cupsd (which actually set up the config files)
copy /path/to/your/script to /etc/cups/interfaces/queue_name

Using a PPD file (the usual way which uses the various
ready-made provided CUPS filters with all their features
and additionally if needed whatever printer drivers) via:
# lpadmin -p queue_name -v device_URI -P /path/to/file.ppd -E
which lets the cupsd (which actually set up the config files)
copy /path/to/file.ppd to /etc/cups/ppd/queue_name.ppd


In your advanced case (500 printers) I would even recommend
to "learn CUPS" by using only its command line tools because
I think this gets you in a more direct contact to the cupsd.
Furthermore I think that all those nice graphical tools to set up
and maintain print queues are not really powerful enough to let
you work well with 500 print queues. I don't say those tools fail
but I think it could become annoying to maintain 500 print queues
using graphical dialogs which are usually not designed to display
so many queues really well (probably a 500 printers use-case
is not the main use-case for which those graphical tools
are primarily designed ;-)


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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