Re: How to set up a network-attached printer

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Warren Block wrote:

[snip]

For extra points, add another printcap entry for lp: that will print plain text.

I did something essentially identical to what Warren outlined, and it's worked fine for many years now, since long before I'd ever heard of CUPS. Here's the printcap entry:

# HP color laser
lp|snow|snowball|lj|ps|HP ColorLaserJet 4550N:\
:sh:\
:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=:rm=snowball:rp="auto":

By using various names separated by pipe symbols, they are all equivalent. Since one of them is lp, you can just send text to the printer and it works, e.g.

$ lpr textfile

I think that "lp" being the first entry makes it lpr's default; not positive about that.

/usr/ports/print/enscript* is nice for that, or lots of people use /usr/ports/print/apsfilter so they can send about anything to the printer and let it do the conversion.

The printer should already know how to print text. Just send it via lpr; no additional software needed.

--
Chris Hill chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
** [ Busy Expunging <|> ]
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