[aclug-L] Re: Linux printing

[John Reinke <jmreinke@xxxxxxxxx>]

Discouraged Bruce,

I'm pretty sure that "worthless" HOWTO addresses the issue of one 
line beginning where the previous one ended. Either way, I'd suggest 
that you try a package called "magic filter" which can configure your 
system to work with a wide array of printers. That is what I used to 
get an old non-postscript laser printer to print everything, 
including postscript files. (It filters the data through ghostscript 
to perform that trick.) I don't remember much about how to set it up, 
other than it wasn't very difficult, and it has worked perfectly ever 
since.

Once your printer is set up (/etc/printcap and respective queue), you 
should be able to simply list lpr (and the printer name if not the 
default printer) for any application that wants to print, such as 
WordPerfect or Netscape. Overall, it's not much worse than windows, 
and it is much more powerful. Another handy printing package you can 
install is a2ps, which can nicely format your source code.

As in many cases, it's not a matter of Linux being up to the job, 
it's just tough to learn what package to use for a given situation.

Good luck!

John

>       Ain't that the truth! Did you try to use printtool? It's 
>kinda particular
>but it'll do the job sometimes. (Is your printer supported? Prolly so, or
>you wouldn't have gotten as far as you did. Sounds like you'll need to try
>to reinstall lpr; rpm's available from rpmfind (or from your install disks
>for that matter...])
>
>About twenty years ago, I was using a CP/M machine with 64K of memory.  I
>bought a cheap printer and got it to work.  I wrote the printer driver in
>forth.  I could print out a text page.
>
>If anyone has any idea that Linux may someday be on lots of desktops,
>someone
>is going to have to make it possible to print out a page of text.  In three
>hours tonight, I managed to print out a full-color RedHat test page, eleven
>lines each one starting where the previous line ended, and copied a data
>file
>into /usr/bin/lpr (making lpr not too useful from now on).
>
>The HOWTO is worthless (or worse), Wordperfect only has one menu after
>another
>asking for undecipherable things (where are the fonts) and what is the
>destination (a piece of paper, for goodness sakes), the man pages aren't any
>help, as usual.
>
>I's like to use Linux for something more than a test bed for configuring
>Linux.  May never happen.
>
>discouraged again,
>bruce

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