Foomatic 3.0.2 ============== foomatic-filters ---------------- Filter scripts used by the printer spoolers to convert the incoming PostScript data into the printer's native format using a printer/driver specific, but spooler-independent PPD file. Grant Taylor Till Kamppeter http://www.linuxprinting.org/ This usage documentation file is written by Till Kamppeter Intro ----- Foomatic is a database providing information about the usage of printers with free operating systems and free printer drivers, where "free" is meant as free software in the sense of the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org). Therefore the database only contains information about printer drivers which are free software. The technology of this database can also be used for non-free drivers, but the database entries have to be published in separate packages then. The database can also be run under non-free operating systems (as commercial Unixes) as they often use GhostScript and free printer drivers. Since most free operating systems (GNU/Linux, *BSD, ...) are compatible to Unix, their applications send PostScript to the printer queues. Therefore one usually hands over the PostScript directly to a PostScript printer (sometimes with some prepended PostScript commands for options) or uses GhostScript for generating the data format the printer needs. This is done by the printer spooler which also stores the data in a spool directory when the printer is still occupied by another job, transmits the data to a print server in the network, and so on. The printer drivers for non-PostScript printers are either compiled into GhostScript, a plug-in for GhostScript (e. g. IJS drivers), or they are an extra filter which converts a generic bitmap generated by GhostScript into the printer's data format. For this the spooler has to call complicated command lines of GhostScript and the extra filter (if needed). The user of a free operating system normally does not see these command lines because an installation program takes appropriate filter scripts and/or description files from a database and assigns them to the printer queue. Widely used databases were the RHS-Printfilters and the APS filters. Their disadvantages were that they only supported one spooler (LPD/LPRng) and only a small part of the driver's options (mostly page size and resolution). Foomatic supports all options of the drivers and all known spoolers (LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, CUPS, PPR, PDQ, CPS, direct spooler-less printing). In addition, all known free software printer drivers are supported. Foomatic also supports printing of various non-PostScript file types for spoolers which do not support this by themselves (LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, spooler-less printing). To enable this feature you need to have "a2ps", "enscript", or "mpage" installed. Another problem is that the way how to install queues, to print files, and to handle jobs is very different with different spoolers. LPD for example requires editing of configuration files for adding a queue, whereas CUPS and PPR have specialized command line utilities. Foomatic puts a layer between the applications and the spoolers so that one has a common, spooler-independent command line interface for all spoolers, so that switching of spoolers or administration of a network with different spoolers gets much easier, because for the same operations there are the same commands, independent of the spooler. This command line interface can also be used as a base for spooler-independent graphical frontends. Installation ------------ Foomatic runs on all systems where one can run the Perl interpreter. foomatic-filters needs nothing else than the Perl interpreter to build and run. To connect to remote printers, you need additional connectivity software (as "rlpr", "nc", "smbspool', ...). To print non-PostScript files with LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, or without spooler, you will need a2ps, enscript, mpage, or similar filters which convert non-PostScript files to PostScript. a2ps, enscript, and mpage will be automatically used by the scripts when they are installed. Download sources: rlpr: http://freshmeat.net/projects/rlpr/ or http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printing/ netcat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/netcat/ This package does not require any other Foomatic package. it can be used with PPD files downloaded from linuxprinting.org, with manufacturer-supplied PPDs for PostScript printers, and probably with other PPD files. Note: PPD files for native CUPS drivers, as the ones shipping with CUPS or Gimp-Print cannot be used with other spoolers than CUPS. For non-PostScript printers one also needs GhostScript (5.50 or newer, ESP GhostScript 7.05.4 or newer highly recommended) and the appropriate printer driver. For drivers which have to be compiled into GhostScript ("Execution style: GhostScript" on the driver pages on linuxprinting.org) check with "gs -h" whether the driver is in your GhostScript. If not you need to compile the driver into your GhostScript or use a GhostScript version which already contains it. If the driver page says "Execution style: Uniprint", it is much easier, check whether the appropriate ".upp" file is in one of the directories listed under "Search path:" in the end of the "gs -h" output. Copy the ".upp" file to one of these directories when it was not there already. The third type of driver is marked with "Execution style: Filter", this means, that you have to install a filter executable in addition to GhostScript. Check with "which " whether the filter is already there, otherwise download and install the appropriate package. foomatic-filters can be installed using these commands (if you have downloaded this package from CVS, run "./make_configure" at first, for that you will also need the "autoconf" and "aclocal" utilities, "aclocal" is in the "automake" package in some distributions): ./configure make make install "make install" must be run as "root", the other commands can be run as a normal user. The "configure" script will auto-detect where the scripts have to be installed and where the Perl interpreter is located. If "configure" fails because of something not being installed, do rm -rf config.cache autom*.cache before you run "configure" again (after installing the missing parts). By default, foomatic-filters is installed into subdirectories of /usr/local (e. g. /usr/local/bin/foomatic-gswrapper), to get it into subdirectories of /usr (/usr/bin/foomatic-gswrapper), enter: ./configure --prefix=/usr make make install There are other things which can be adjusted by options on the "configure" command line, enter "./configure --help" for more info. You can also modify variables in the beginning of the "Makefile" after running "configure", but note that every run of "configure" re-creates the "Makefile". You can also run Foomatic out of its source directory (for example when you want to try it out, or when you don't have root access). Therefore enter (can be done as a normal user): ./configure make inplace and enter the commands with "./" in the beginning (e. g. "./foomatic-rip ...", "man ./foomatic-rip.1"). This also works on a machine where a system-wide Foomatic is already installed. In addition, you should install a utility to make PostScript out of non-PostScript files, so that you can print those non-PostScript files and also a list of available options using the "docs" option. The supported utilities are "a2ps" (http://www-inf.enst.fr/~demaille/a2ps/), "enscript" (http://people.ssh.fi/mtr/genscript/), and "mpage" (http://www.mesa.nl/pub/mpage). Recommended is "a2ps" because it detects many file types (text, PDF, most image formats) and together with ImageMagick (for images) and GNU/ESP/AFPL GhostScript 6.51 or newer (for PDF) it converts them to PostScript. The other tools convert only text files. The tool you have installed is auto-detected by foomatic-rip and used automatically if necessary. PPR needs this tool only for printing the option list, and CUPS does not need it at all. PPR and CUPS use internal filters for printing non-PostScript files. If you have a multi-function device from HP, install HPOJ from http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/ before starting to set up printer queues with foomatic-filters. This is needed for printing on USB devices and for scanning and photo memory card access on all devices. If you use CUPS 1.1.12 or newer together with the old HPOJ 0.8, you need also the latest "ptal" backend script from http://www.hornclan.com/~mark/cups/ License information and installation instructions for this script you find in the beginning of the script itself. See also the end of the "Adding a queue" section in this file to see how to use this script. The "ptal" backend script is already included in HPOJ 0.9. Setting up printers ------------------- If you have "foomatic-db-engine" installed, see the USAGE file there. If not, see, depending on your spooler: CUPS: http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr: http://www.linuxprinting.org/lpd-doc.html PPR: http://www.linuxprinting.org/ppr-doc.html PDQ: http://www.linuxprinting.org/pdq-doc.html CPS: http://www.tww.cx/cps.php Direct, spooler-less printing: http://www.linuxprinting.org/direct-doc.html Usage of PPD files (for all spoolers): http://www.linuxprinting.org/ppd-doc.html