path: root/README

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 <gtaylor@picante.com>
Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmx.net>

http://www.linuxprinting.org/

This README contains mainly info for developers. See the file USAGE if
you want to know how to use Foomatic.


Copying
-------

This package and also the other Foomatic packages are under the
GPL. See http://www.gnu.org/.

If you spot a data error or any other bug, send mail describing the bug to
foomatic-devel@linuxprinting.org

General discussion happens in the foomatic-devel forum/list thing at
www.linuxprinting.org.


Intro
-----

This is the stable version of Foomatic. See

http://www.linuxprinting.org/contribute.html#programming
http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/foomatic-devel/2002q3/thread.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/foomatic-devel/2002q4/thread.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/kpfeifle/LinuxKongress2002/Tutorial/IV.Foomatic-Developer/IV.tutorial-handout-foomatic-development.html

to know more about its development.

Your suggestions, bug reports, patches, ... are welcome on

http://www.linuxprinting.org/newsportal/thread.php3?name=linuxprinting.foomatic.devel

For getting Foomatic PPD files for this version, go to

http://www.linuxprinting.org/

See the README file of "foomatic-db-engine" for a (more or less)
complete overview of Foomatic.


Supported spoolers
------------------

CUPS     - Common Unix Printing System (http://www.cups.org/)
LPD      - Line Printer Daemon (Does this have a home page anywhere?)
LPRng    - LPR - New Generation (http://www.lprng.org/)
GNUlpr   - An enhanced LPD (http://sf.net/projects/lpr, development stopped)
PPR      - Page PRinter spooler (http://ppr.sourceforge.net/)
PDQ      - Print, Don't Queue (http://pdq.sf.net/, development stopped)
CPS      - Coherent Printing System (http://www.tww.cx/cps.php)
---      - Direct, spooler-less printing (http://www.linuxprinting.org/)


Programs and important files from this package
----------------------------------------------

This package contains only two scripts and its man pages: foomatic-rip
and foomatic-gswrapper. foomatic-rip is the main
PostScript-to-printer's-native-language filter and foomatic-gswrapper
is an m auxiliary filter ironing out some GhostScript quirks.

foomatic-rip works with all spoolers and always uses PPD files for
printer/driver capabilities info. Manufacturer-supplied PPDs of
PostScript printers can be used, too.

Note: The scripts appear as ".in" files in the source tree and CVS,
because the path for the Perl interpreter is inserted by the
"configure" script. The "configure" script makes the final files from
them with the inserted path of the Perl interpreter.

configure.in

  The source from which GNU autoconf generates the "configure" script

acinclude.m4

  Additional macros for the "configure" script

make_configure

  Calls aclocal and autoconf to generate "configure" from "configure.ac" 
  and "acinclude.m4"

Makefile.in

  The template from which "configure" generates the Makefile

install-sh

  Helper script for "configure"

foomatic-rip

  Universal print filter (PostScript -> printer's native language) to be
  used with all known printer spoolers (CUPS, LPRng, LPD, GNUlpr, PPR,
  PDQ, CPS, spooler-less printing). It Gets printer/driver capability
  information from PPD files. The PPD files can either be generated from
  the Foomatic database or they can be manufacturer-supplied PPD files
  for PostScript printers.

foomatic-gswrapper

  This is not really a file conversion or print filter, but it is used
  by foomatic-rip when it is present. This is a wrapper around 
  Ghostscript. It regularizes options if they differ between gs
  flavors. It also assures that the GhostScript output is not mixed up
  with messages produced by some PostScript files (esp. files from
  Windows). foomatic-rip auto-detects the presence of
  foomatic-gswrapper.

beh

  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.

  This script makes the handling of such backend errors configurable, so
  that the problem can easily be worked around. The execution of the backend
  can be periodically repeated and/or the error state of the backend can
  be kept away from CUPS, so that the queue stays active.

  See instructions in the beginning of the beh script and in the USAGE file.

foomatic-rip.1
foomatic-gswrapper,1

  man pages for the filter scripts.


Dependencies
------------

To build and run this package only a Perl interpreter (5.6.0 and
newer) is needed.

To connect to remote printers, you need additional connectivity
software (as "rlpr", "nc", "smbspool', ...).


How does it work?
-----------------

foomatic-rip is a filter which takes PostScript (and also certain
non-PostScript formats) from standard input and translates it to the
printer's native language. The resulting data is usually directed to
standard output, but depending on the spooler abnd its configuration
it can also be directed to elsewhere. The information how to do this
translation it gets from a PPD file, from command line options,
environment variables, and spooler configuration files.

foomatic-rip is designed in a way that it does neither use any
temporary files nor reads the whole print job into memory. So even
huge jobs can be printed without needing big resources. Data is only
buffered in memory as long as it is not clear how to treat the
data. This happens for example when we don't know yet whether the
input file is PostScript, or when we are searching for embedded option
settings. This is done by forking into up to 6 subprocesses which do
all the tasks of the filter chain in parallel, see the overview of
these subprocesses below.

See also the numerous comments in the foomatic-rip Perl script.


foomatic-rip does the following steps to do its work:


Spooler auto-detection

At first, foomatic-rip reads its command line and a certain assortment
of environment variables. With this information it determines from
which spooler it was called, since every spooler calls its filter(s)
with different command lines and different information supplied via
environment variables.


Gathering all information to execute the print job

Next step after figuring out what the spooler is, is collecting the
information about the print job which was not found in the first
step. Now the knowledge of which spooler is used is taken into account
for interpreting the information.


Reading the PPD file

In one of the previous steps we have found the name of the PPD file
assigned to the print queue currently in use. Now the PPD file is read
to get all information needed to build the renderer's (Usually, the
renderer is GhostScript, when no renderer is needed, as for a
PostScript printer, "cat" is used) command line, the available
options, their default values, and how to apply them. After having
parsed the PPD file we have a renderer command line and a list of
options with the range of possible settings and a default setting. For
LPRng, LPD, GNUlpr, and spooler-less printing we get also the
so-called postpipe here, defining a shell command line into which
foomatic-rip should firect its output. If no postpipe is found, the
output data goes to standard output. The postpipe allows to print to
destinations which are not directly supported by the spooler.


Applying user-supplied settings

All option settings which the user has supplied on the command line
are checked whether they are valid (option exists, choice in range)
and then applied to the list of default settigs, replacing the
defaults by the values given by the user. The options not mentioned on
the command line keep their default values from the PPD file.


Check for the "docs" option

foomatic-rip accepts a special option which is not defined in the PPD
file, the "docs" option. When the user supplies it, he wants to print
a listing of all options available for the printer/driver combo in
use. So the incoming data on standard input is discarded and a
sub-process for generating the option listing in plain text form is
launched. Standard input of the main process is connected to the
output of the sub-process. Now the main process behaves as the option
listing would be the job which the user has sent.


Print files

With some spoolers the job(s) to be printed is supplied in (a)
file(s), in this case we close standard input and open the file on the
stabdard input handler. This way the following steps read from the
file instead of from standard input. The rest of the foomatic-rip
process is repeated for every input file, to print them one after the
other.


Raw queue

When we have a raw queue, all the rest of the incoming data is
directly passed to standard output or to the postpipe now. The
following steps will be omitted then.


Print the job

After all the preparation, the PostScript job is examined for traces
of option settings supposed to be applied to the renderer's command
line or to the JCL (Job Coomand Language, for example PJL) header
which is sent to the printer before the renderer's output is sent.
PPD-aware applications and spoolers stuff option settings directly
into the file, they do not necessarily send PPD options by the command
line. There is also stuffed in PostScript code to apply option
settings given by the command line of the printing command ("lpr",
"lp", ...) and to set the defaults given in the PPD file.

Examination strategy: We read lines from standard input until the
first %%Page: comment appears and save them as @psheader. This is the
page-independent header part of the PostScript file. The PostScript
interpreter (renderer) must execute this part once before rendering
any assortment of pages. Then pages can be printed in any arbitrary
selection or order. All option settings we find here will be collected
in the default option set for the RIP (Raster Image Processor,
renderer) command line.

Now the pages will be read and sent to the renderer, one after the
other. Every page is read into memory until the %%EndPageSetup comment
appears (or a certain amount of lines was read in the case that there
is no %%EndPageSetup). So we can get option settings only valid for
this page. If we have such settings we set them in the modified
command set for this page.

If the renderer is not running yet (first page) we start it with the
command line built from the current modified command set and send the
first page to it, in the end we leave the renderer running and keep
input and output pipes open, so that it can accept further pages. If
the renderer is still running from the previous page and the current
modified command set is the same as the one for the previous page, we
send the page. If the command set is different, we close the renderer,
re-start it with the command line built from the new modified command
set, send the header again, and then the page.

After the last page the trailer (%%Trailer) is sent.

The output pipe of this program stays open all the time so that the
spooler does not assume that the job has finished when the renderer is
re-started.

Non DSC-conforming documents will be read until a certain line number
is reached. Options for the renderer's command line or the JCL header
appearing later will be ignored. This means that option settings in
the page headers will not be taken into account.

If options are implemented by PostScript code supposed to be stuffed
into the job's PostScript data we stuff the code for all these options
into our job data, So all default settings made in the PPD file (the
user can have edited the PPD file to change them) are taken care of
and command line options get also applied. To give priority to
settings made by applications we insert the options's code in the
beginnings of their respective sections, so that sommething, which is
already inserted, gets executed after our code. Missing sections are
automatically created. In non-DSC-conforming files we insert the
option code in the beginning of the file. This is the same policy as
used by the "pstops" filter of CUPS.

If CUPS is the spooler, the option settings were already inserted by
the "pstops" filter (both PPD defaults and user-supplied options), so
we don't insert them again. The only thing we do is correcting
settings of numerical options when they were set to a value not
available as choice in the PPD file, As "pstops" does not support
"real" numerical options, it sees these settings as an invalid choice
and stays with the default setting. In this case we correct the
setting in the first occurence of the option's code, as this one is
the one added by CUPS, later occurences come from applications and
should not be touched.

If the input is not PostScript (if there is no "%!" after
$maxlinestopsstart lines) a file conversion filter will automatically
be applied to the incoming data, so that we will process the resulting
PostScript here. This way we have always PostScript data here and so
we can apply the printer/driver features described in the PPD
file. For the file conversion filter two subprocesses are started, the
task of the first one is to pass the already buffered lines into the
filter and then to continue reading standard input (without parsing
the data) to pass the rest of the job to the filter. The second
subprocess is the filter itself, getting its standard input from the
first subprocess and the giving its standard output to the main
process. This way the main process has again PostScript as its
standard input.

Supported file conversion filters are "a2ps", "enscript", "mpage", and
spooler-specific filters. All filters convert plain text to
PostScript, "a2ps" also other formats. The conversion filter is always
used when one prints the documentation pages, as they are created as
plain text, when CUPS is the spooler "pstops" is executed after the
filter so that the default option settings from the PPD file and
CUPS-specific options as N-up get applied. On regular printouts one
gets always PostScript when CUPS or PPR is the spooler, so the filter
is only used for regular printouts under LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, PDQ, or
without spooler.

The main process keeps always parsing the PostScript onput, it
launches the renderer in one subprocess and launches and additional
subprocess for bracketing the renderer's output with the JCL commands
and putting the resulting data to standard output or to the postpipe.


Overview of the subprocesses
----------------------------

To do the filtering without loading the whole file into memory we work
on a data stream, we read the data line by line analyse it to decide what
filters to use and start the filters if we have found out which we need.
We buffer the data only as long as we didn't determine which filters to
use for this piece of data and with which options. There are no temporary
files used.

foomatic-rip splits into up to 6 parallel processes to do the whole
filtering (listed in the order of the data flow):

   KID0: Generate documentation pages (only jobs with "docs" option)
   KID2: Put together already read data and current input stream for
         feeding into the file conversion filter (only non-PostScript
         and "docs" jobs)
   KID1: Run the file conversion filter to convert non-PostScript
         input into PostScript (only non-PostScript and "docs" jobs)
   MAIN: Prepare the job auto-detecting the spooler, reading the PPD,
         extracting the options from the command line, and parsing
         the job data itself. It analyses the job data to check
         whether it is PostScript and starts KID1/KID2 if not, it
         also stuffs PostScript code from option settings into the
         PostScript data stream. It starts the renderer (KID3/KID4)
         as soon as it knows its command line and restarts it when
         page-specific option settings need another command line
         or different JCL commands.
   KID3: The rendering process. In most cases GhostScript, "cat"
         for native PostScript printers with their manufacturer's
         PPD files.
   KID4: Put together the JCL commands and the renderer's output
         and send all that either to STDOUT or pipe it into the
         command line defined with $postpipe.