The Printing HOWTO The Printing HOWTO Table of Contents The Printing HOWTO.............................................................................................................................................................1 Grant Taylor................................................................................................................................................................1 1. Introduction..........................................................................................................................................................................3 1.1. Terminology.........................................................................................................................................................3 1.2. History..................................................................................................................................................................3 1.3. Copyright..............................................................................................................................................................4 2. Quick Start...........................................................................................................................................................................5 2.1. Where to Get Help................................................................................................................................................5 3. How to print.........................................................................................................................................................................7 3.1. With PDQ.............................................................................................................................................................7 3.1.1. Xpdq...........................................................................................................................................................7 3.1.2. Pdq..............................................................................................................................................................7 3.2. With LPD and the lpr command...........................................................................................................................7 3.3. GUI Printing Tools...............................................................................................................................................7 3.3.1. GPR............................................................................................................................................................7 3.3.2. QtCUPS......................................................................................................................................................9 3.3.3. XPP...........................................................................................................................................................10 3.3.4. XPDQ.......................................................................................................................................................12 4. Kernel printer devices.......................................................................................................................................................13 4.1. The lp device (kernels <=2.1.32)........................................................................................................................13 4.2. The parport device (kernels >= 2.1.33)..............................................................................................................13 4.3. Serial devices......................................................................................................................................................14 4.4. USB Devices......................................................................................................................................................14 5. Supported Printers............................................................................................................................................................15 5.1. Postscript............................................................................................................................................................15 5.2. Non−Postscript...................................................................................................................................................15 5.3. What printers work?...........................................................................................................................................16 5.3.1. Printer compatibility list...........................................................................................................................16 5.4. How to buy a printer...........................................................................................................................................25 5.4.1. What do I have?........................................................................................................................................26 6. Spooling software...............................................................................................................................................................27 6.1. LPD.....................................................................................................................................................................27 6.1.1. LPD front−ends........................................................................................................................................27 6.2. PDQ....................................................................................................................................................................27 6.3. LPRng.................................................................................................................................................................29 6.4. PPR.....................................................................................................................................................................29 6.5. CUPS..................................................................................................................................................................29 7. How it all works.................................................................................................................................................................31 7.1. PDQ....................................................................................................................................................................31 7.2. LPD.....................................................................................................................................................................31 8. How to set things up...........................................................................................................................................................33 8.1. Configuring PDQ................................................................................................................................................33 8.1.1. Drivers and Interfaces..............................................................................................................................33 8.1.2. Defining Printers......................................................................................................................................33 8.1.3. Creating a PDQ Driver Declaration.........................................................................................................34 8.1.3.1. Options...........................................................................................................................................34 8.1.3.2. Language Filtering.........................................................................................................................35 8.1.3.3. Output Filtering..............................................................................................................................36 8.2. Configuring LPD................................................................................................................................................37 8.2.1. Basic LPD configuration..........................................................................................................................37 8.2.2. LPD for PostScript Printers......................................................................................................................38 8.2.2.1. How it works..................................................................................................................................38 8.2.2.2. Obtaining and Installing.................................................................................................................39 8.2.2.3. Controlling Postscript Options.......................................................................................................39 8.2.3. File Permissions.......................................................................................................................................39 8.3. Large Installations..............................................................................................................................................40 8.4. Accounting.........................................................................................................................................................40