[cups] Unable to use raw and InputSlot options together

[Michael Sweet]

Hal,

> On Oct 4, 2016, at 2:47 PM, Hal Maner <hmaner at msystemsintl.com> wrote:
> 
> Michael, thank you for your answer.  I wish there were a way to use existing system commands to accomplish this - I will have difficult time explaining this to the users that their 20-year old server is able to get this done with built in commands (qprt and lp on AIX) yet we cannot do it with Linux in the year 2016 without writing some special code/filters...

Well, 20 years ago plain text reporting was standard procedure, with embedded PDL commands for fonts, etc.  Interface scripts added support for things like paper trays, etc.  And these interface scripts came from the OS vendor or third-party add-ons.

Today PDF and PostScript are far more typical, with occasional plain text (without embedded PDL commands), so the included OS software deals with those formats instead.

> We have not worked with creating special PPD filters before and I have no idea how easy or difficult/time consuming this may be.  Is there a document you can point me to on this?  


This is a good place to start:

    http://www.cups.org/doc/api-filter.html <http://www.cups.org/doc/api-filter.html>

You can do pretty much everything you need with a shell script, and then point to it from your PPD file with a cupsFilter line.  For most laser printers you need to add PCL commands to change the input tray - see:

    http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpl13210.pdf <http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpl13210.pdf>

specifically PAPER SOURCE COMMAND (ESC & l # H) on page 5-4.

_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer