[cups] cups 2.0.2 / cups-filters-1.0.62 && printing UTF-8 text files

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Feb 12 11:18 Matthias Apitz wrote (excerpt):
>> In your particular case you wrote:
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> # diff /usr/local/cups/lib/cups/filter/texttops*
>> 22c22
>> < PDF2PS=`which pdftops`
>> ---
>> > PDF2PS=`which pdf2ps`
>> 37c37
>> < `dirname $0`/texttopdf "$1" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" | $PDF2PS - - - - -
>> ---
>> > `dirname $0`/texttopdf "$1" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" | $PDF2PS - -
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> On my openSUSE 13.2 system with cups-filters-1.0.62
>> /usr/lib/cups/filter/texttops contains this already:
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> # grep PDF2PS /usr/lib/cups/filter/texttops
>> PDF2PS=`which pdf2ps`
>> `dirname $0`/texttopdf "$1" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" | $PDF2PS - -
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> I assume there is no bug in texttops - instead it seems something
>> went wrong when you made cups-filters-1.0.62 on your SLES 11 host.
>
> No, wrong. As you see the shell script texttops is looking for 'pdf2ps'
> and not for 'pdftops'; Linux provides this old pdf2ps, while
> cups-filters the correct 'pdftops' which has other syntax; both is fixed
> with my diff.

No, also wrong.
Your diff tells that "pdftops" has to be replaced by "pdf2ps".

And even wronger ;-)
On my SLE11 and openSUSE 13.2 systems pdftops is not provided
by cups-filters but as /usr/bin/pdftops by the poppler-tools RPM.

pdf2ps is not "old", /usr/bin/pdf2ps is still provided by Ghostscript
(currently Ghostscript 9.15 on my openSUSE 13.2 system).

There are various tools that can convert PDF into Postscript.
Each one has its pros and cons.

For example the Adobe Reader is another tool
that can convert PDF into Postscript, cf.
https://en.opensuse.org/Adobe_Reader

See "POSTSCRIPT PRINTING RENDERER AND RESOLUTION SELECTION"
in the cups-filters README file that reads
----------------------------------------------------------------
By default, the PostScript is generated with Ghostscript's
"ps2write" output device
----------------------------------------------------------------

Accordingly "pdf2ps" is used by default in cups-filters.

If the cups-filters upstream default should be changed,
it should be discussed with cups-filters upstream.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX GmbH - GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Jane Smithard, Jennifer Guild,
Dilip Upmanyu, Graham Norton - HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg)