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. Till Kamppeter http://www.openprinting.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, Solaris LP, 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.openprinting.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 the OpenPrinting site, with manufacturer-supplied PPDs for PostScript printers, and probably with other PPD files. 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 the OpenPrinting site) 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 printer or multi-function device from HP, install HPLIP from http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/ before starting to set up printer queues with foomatic-filters. This is needed for printing on certain USB devices and for scanning and photo memory card access on all devices. It also adds maintenance functionality for inkjets, reporting of ink or toner levels and printer status, and also remote readout of the printers front-panel LCD. CUPS is required as the printing system when HPLIP is used. Note: The "hp" CUPS backend and "beh" (see below) cannot be used together. 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.openprinting.org/cups-doc.html LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr: http://www.openprinting.org/lpd-doc.html PPR: http://www.openprinting.org/ppr-doc.html PDQ: http://www.openprinting.org/pdq-doc.html CPS: http://www.tww.cx/cps.php Direct, spooler-less printing: http://www.openprinting.org/direct-doc.html Usage of PPD files (for all spoolers): http://www.openprinting.org/ppd-doc.html beh - Backend Error Handler --------------------------- A wrapper for CUPS backends to make error handling configurable Usually, if a CUPS backend exits with an error status other than zero (for example if a printer is not turned on or not reachable on the network), CUPS disables the print queue and one can only print again if a system administrator re-enables the queue manually. Even restarting CUPS (or rebooting) does not re-enable disabled queues. For system administrators this can get annoying, for newbie users who are not aware of this problem it looks like that CUPS is severely broken. They remove and re-install print queues, getting on the nerves of distro install support, people, or even switch back to a proprietary operating system. This script makes the handling of such backend errors configurable, so that the problem can easily be worked around. The new possibilities are: - Let queues simply not being disabled. Simple approach, but job gets lost. - Repeat a given number of times. - Repeat infinitely often, until the job gets finally through. This is the standard of LPRng, and it eliminates loss of the job. - The interval between two attemts to run the backend can also be configured. - Configuration is done independently for each print queue. So local printers and network printers can be treated differently. Usage: Make sure "beh" is in the CUPS backend directory (usually /usr/lib/cups/backend/) and world-readable and -executable. Restart CUPS (usually "killall -HUP cupsd" or "/etc/init.d/cups restart"). If all is correct "lpinfo -v" should have "beh" in its output. Then activate "beh" for your print queue(s) with command(s) like this: lpadmin -p -E -v beh:/
/// with : The name of your print queue
: Don't Disable, if "1", beh always exits with zero status, so the queue gets never disabled when the original backend exits with an error. "0" carries the error status of the last call of the backend (after retries) on to CUPS, so the queue usually gets disabled. : Attempts, number of attempts to recall the backend in case of an error. "0" means infinite retries. In this case
gets meaningless. : Delay between two attempts to call the beckend, to be given in seconds and as an integer number. Meaningless if is one. : The original URI, which your queue had before. Can be determined with "lpstat -v". All parameters, especially,
, , and have always to be specified, even if one of them is meaningless due to the setting of the others. beh works with every backend except the "hp" backend of HPLIP. Example URIs: beh:/1/3/5/socket://printer:9100 On the network printer with host name "printer" it is tried to access 3 times with 5 second delays between the attempts. If the job still fails, the queue is not disabled (and the job discarded). beh:/0/10/60/socket://printer:9100 Retry 10 times in one minute intervals, disable the queue when still not succeeding. beh:/1/0/60/usb://Brother/HL-5040%20series On a Brother HL-5040 on the USB try infinitely often until the printer comes back, in intervals of one minute. This way the job does not get lost when the printer is turned off and one can intendedly delay printing by simply switching off the printer. The ideal configuration for desktop printers and/or home users.