[PLUG] Printing

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Wed, 8 May 2002, Rich Shepard wrote:

>   Is anyone else here using WordPerfect and CUPS? I have everything working
> again except the printing. (And it was broken printing that started my
> problems the past couple of days.)
>
>   When things worked, I was able to create a printer destination of 'ljraw'.
> Now I cannot. The default lpr printer is $PRINTER with the destination
> option of 'ljraw', but it's not working. If I select a WPApp destination
> (other than disk), the printer control dialog box pops up and says there's a
> problem with /var/spool/cups/. I cannot find the problem so I cannot clear
> it up.

I am currently using WordPerfect 8 and CUPS.  Your problem is most likely
WordPerfect, I have had nothing but problems with it and printing for all
the years I have been using it under Linux.  From what you wrote I kind of
get the impression you have a different version of WP than I do, so I am
not sure if any of this will help or even applies to you.

   1 - My experience with my version of WP is that if it isn't in the
       /etc/printcap file WP can't deal with it (yes I know that CUPS
       doesn't use the printcap).
   2 - If it is in the /etc/printcap file, the definition must all be
       on one line, no continuations/multi-line definitions.
   3 - WP only understands the first name of each printer in the
       printcap file, all the others in the printer definition are
       ignored.
   4 - WP gets upset if the printer name is longer than two characters
       (possibly if it is shorter as well, I never tried it).

With these four issues as a given, I configured CUPS with a two character
printer name for the printer and added a single line description of the
printer to my printcap:

   st|StylusC80|Remote printer Epson Stylus C80:lp=:rm=nashapur.deatech.com:rp=StylusC80:sd=/var/spool/lpd/remote:mx#0:sh:

most of this is probably unnecessary since WP will just pass the data to
lpr, but if I ever use a non-cups printing program, it will probably be
useful (I only converted to CUPS one or two months ago).  Then in WP I
added a printer definition using the passthru postscript driver and
referencing this printer.

I don't know which distribution you are using, but under Debian, I needed
a separate package "cupsys-bsd" to get the old style lpr command for WP
to use when printing.  My experience with error messages from WP when the
printing failed was that they were completely useless and gave no actual
clue as to the problem which was actually occuring.  Instead I used the
printer logs and CUPS status commands to see if any attempt was actually
made to queue a job, and if so, why it failed to print.

FWIW.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com