Printing to networked printers?

[Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>]

I've tried cups, and given up as it is just too complex and over-
engineered and I don't want to have to understand the insides in
order to get it to work.

In times gone by, I've had directly-connected HP printers and they
just worked with lpr (plus print/magicfilter from pkgsrc).  But I
cannot seem to get it to work with a network-connected HP DeskJet
2545.  I've "cloned" the /usr/pkg/libexec/magicfilter/dj550c-filter
for my 2545 (and I added a line for sending %PDF to ghostscript,
but have not gotten that far yet).  I've added a printer entry in
/etc/printcap with the device set to "lp=9100@192.168.1.250"
(using the "raw" port as shown in an earlier commented-out example
line).

I've confirmed that my filter (or at least, a filter) is being
invoked, since the "default" entry for plain text, simply uses a
directive to send a prefix string, the plain text, and a suffix.
I have confirmed using tcpdump that all three are being sent to
the printer.

But still nothing gets printed.

Am I doomed to keep my windows laptop around forever, just so I
can ftp files there for printing?  Or is there some more "magic"
that I'm missing to get this to work?  Is there a better filter
to use as a starting point?

On the subject of filters,

1. Would I be better off using some text-to-ps converter, rather
   than using the provided prefix "<esc>E<esc>&k2G<esc>(0N" and
   suffix "<esc>E"?

2. Would I be better off using something other than ghostscript
   to print .pdf files?  I found a /usr/pkg/bin/pdftops utility
   which I think came from the print/poppler-utils package...


Any help will be greatly appreciated.  I really hate having to
depend on the old Windoze laptop as a low-tech print server!  :)



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| Paul Goyette     | PGP Key fingerprint:     | E-mail addresses:          |
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