Cups > 1.6 without Ghostscript, via. poppler on Slackware 14

[Andrew Robinson]

Hi, I'm trying to get Cups operating without using Ghostscript for the pstoraster filtering step, but rather -- consolidating all PDF/PS libraries into Poppler; and using a set of alternate filters.

I am very close to success -- but am having two distinct sets of problems; Operational problems, and install problems.

I downloaded the alternate filters from http://www.openprinting.org/download/
and am using package cups-filters/cups-filters-1.0.24.tar.xz , and also ijs reference package ijs-0.35 from the same site.  I am also using poppler 0.20.2. but from slackware 14.  (everything else from slackware 14 as well...)

There was a single file in the alternate filters package which stopped the compile; I believe it was in the pdftopdf directory -- and there was only two lines of code that were bad -- so I simply copied a fixed version of that function from a later repository (but I didn't use the whole later repository because of other dependency issues...)

I compiled the package with the " --with-pdftops-path=pdftops "  option, so that Ghostscript is no longer necessary.

In any event, the alternate filters compile; I can now compile cups 1.6.1 without Ghostscript installed at all (but with minor problems).

I have gotten many of the attempts to run Cups properly, and go through the motions of preparing a raster file and sending it to an Epson Stylus photo R200; But one of two things happens -- either 1) if I have color selected, I get a "colorspace not available" error,  or 2) I set the printer defaults to grayscale and no error happens, the log indicates the image went to the printer backend (rastertoepson -- and then backend) -- BUUUT the printer does nothing.  (But no errors either.)

So, I think I have a bad .ppd file... ?

Secondly,
Slackware has pre-made cups init scripts and doesn't NEED OR USE the same method that Cups 1.6.1 *wants* to install in /etc/rc.d -- Soooo... cups is making a mess of my scripts directory and bombs out of "make install" with error number 2; and so I don't know if something else is not getting installed that needs to be that could be complicating the operations problems.

So, how do I tell cups 1.6.1 to forget about installing problematic "init" scripts?

Thanks!