You can print documents from many Linux applications. In most cases you have to enter the appropriate print command somewhere in the "Print" or "Printing Setup" dialog.

The "lpr" command is compatible to LPD's, and thus the lpr usually provided as the default printing command would work. To choose the printer and set the options for the printout more easily, it is recommended to replace lpr in the printing command field by xpp or qtcups.

When you click on the "OK" or the "Print" button of the printing dialog now, 'xpp' or 'QtCUPS' will pop up and you can choose the printer and set the options as described earlier.

Please note that the application often does not redraw its window as long as you have 'xpp' or 'QtCUPS' open. This can lead to strange effects when moving their dialog windows, but as soon as you have sent your printing job these effects will disappear.

In 'Netscape' you click on the printer symbol and the printing dialog shows up. Enter xpp or qtcups in the "Print Command" field, click on "Print" and you are set. 'Netscape' remembers its printing command, so next time you simply click on the printer icon and then on the "Print" button of the dialog.

'Star Office' is a bit more difficult to set up for printing with 'xpp' or 'QtCUPS'. At first you have to quit a running 'Star Office'. Then switch to the 'root' account and type:

/opt/office52/program/spadmin &

This will open a dialog window. In it set up a queue with the "Generic Printer" driver (CUPS takes care of the PostScript rendering, so no special driver is needed) and xpp or qtcups as the print command. Usually you just accept the default entry ("Generic Printer in queue default_queue (/usr/bin/lpr)") and click on "Connect". Then replace /usr/bin/lpr in the prompt line by xpp or qtcups. You can also add an entry by choosing "Generic Printer" from the driver list and then click on "Connect" to set up the printing command. You can even set up two queues, one for xpp and one for qtcups. Neither do you need to set up a queue for every printer you want to use, nor do you need to select appropriate drivers for your printers, nor do you need to change anything when you connect a new printer. With the queue using the xpp or qtcups command you have automatically access to all your printers and can set up all their options. When you have set up your queue, click on "Close" to close spadmon.

When you run 'Star Office' now, just do the printing as usual, but choose your newly configured queue as "Printer". This will bring up dialog of the graphical CUPS tool you have chosen and the rest will be easy.

All 'KDE' applications, whether they are part of 'KOffice' or not, share the same printing dialog. It is one of the few printing dialogs which show a list of available printers so you can choose the printer with a single mouse click. But unfortunately, this dialog is heavily fitted to LPD: The printing command has been hard-coded to lpr -P [printer] and the printer list is taken from the '/etc/printcap' file. This works with CUPS: one can choose a printer and set some options (which are applied during the translation from the application-internal data format into Postscript, the format in which the data is sent to the printer queue) and then send the job to the printer by clicking the "OK" button, but you do not have access to CUPS' graphical interfaces to set all the available options. Note: Do not remove or comment out the Printcap /etc/printcap line in '/etc/cups/cupsdconf', otherwise CUPS does not generate a '/etc/printcap' file and without this file the printers will not appear in KDE's printing dialog. See also Configuration of the CUPS daemon.

Printing in 'GIMP' is very different from printing in other applications due to the GIMP-Print plug-in. When you click on your artwork with the right mouse button and choose "File" and then "Print" in the pop-up menu, you get a rather large dialog window.

To set up your printing job, you should start choosing the queue of your printer in the "Printer" field. Then click the "Setup" button at the right of the "Printer" field to choose the driver for your printer. Here you have two possibilities, you can either choose "PostScript Level 2" and remove the -oraw option from the print command (or replace lpr by xpp or qtcups altogether) so that the already installed driver with its settings (especially the color calibration) is used. Or you use the printer drivers of the plug-in (if your printer is supported by them) by choosing the appropriate driver and taking care that the -oraw option to the print command is supplied. -oraw overrides the driver which is assigned to the queue by CUPS. Printer-specific settings (like paper source, paper type, and so on) can only be set when using the second method, but not in Postscript mode. All the other options (image position, size, and type, color adjustment) are always available. Click "Save and Print" to save the settings for the current printer queue.

The PostScript previewer gv can print the displayed file, but if you modify the default printing command in the printing dialog (invoked by the "Print All" and "Print Marked" buttons), 'gv' does not remember the changes. To change this default command permanently to xpp or qtcups, click on "State" and choose "Setup Options" in the pull-down menu. Change the "Print Command" as desired and turn off "Confirm Printing". Then click on "Apply", "Save", and "Dismiss".

From now on, clicking on "Print All" or "Print Marked" brings up the dialog of the desired printing tool.

You can even have a printing preview in almost all applications if you enter gv as the printing command. Use gv -, if gv alone does not work.

documented on: 2004.07.24