(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

"Do you want to refresh the list?

You mean the initial question when you start PSI?
If the hp package is not listed, then you must confirm to refresh the list.
I run a serverside script maybe once a month to get the current list of Barrys packages in PSI.
I just updated it yesterday.
To see the latest packages, you must confirm to refresh the list.

PSI offers this question, because all those lists are quite huge, and might take some minutes to download on a dialup-connection (with ADSL it takes only some seconds).
Mark

Barry K wrote : hpijs is in the list if you are running 2.17.

I thought that was what I was running, but clearly not as booting afresh with pfix=ram gives a different list of packages - including hpijs!

So, the screw-up fairy has visited me again and I've fouled up my installation. As that's a different topic I'll create a new thread in a more appropriate area.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Version 0.3

Bug fixes
1) Fixed a minor bug (introduced in version 0.2) where if you canceled a job it still saved it as the hidden file /root/.pdf

Changes
1) pinstall.sh now adds the printer directly to /etc/cups/printers.conf instead of using lpadmin. This should work for both puppy-unleashed and petget.

New features
1) Remembers last directory used (via config file $HOME/cupspdf.conf).
2) Supply the filename presented to CUPS (if any) as the default filename. For apps that send jobs with filename 'stdin', no default filename is supplied. NB the filename used has all spaces converted to underscores and all other non-alphanumeric characters are dropped. If I can figure out how it get it to generate a file name with spaces that would be added to a future version.

It just keeps getting better.

This one's even better and my 2.16 is fixed now. It would be superb if you could handle the spaces, as again that could get people confused, as you get the same behaviour as before - the printer is "turned off", but also it resets the last directory to /

Even if it just refused to accept filenames with spaces it would be better.

Are you sure the configuration file shouldn't be a hidden file?

----------
It's funny how easy it is to miss bugs like that one - I didn't even notice it until just before you fixed it.

Thanks for reminding me about the spaces (i've just fixed it in the new version). Below is a list of what's different in version 0.4. BTW, in version 0.3, I change the part of the code that was giving the problem with puppy version 1.xx. You can test that and let me know how it works. Just extract the files from the .pet as if it were a tar.gz and copy over to the 1.xx version.

New features
1) Print job completion notification via (config file)
2) Run in a console-only setup (via config file)

Changes
1) Config file is now a hidden file
2) Reorganized code to better accommodate console only option

Sanity check
3) Remove any invalid characters in the filename entered by the user

I have some more testing to do then I'll upload the update. I think this is getting to a stage where I'll have to put together a feature list and a small manual for this package and maybe a configuration gui.

This is all fine and dandy, but I cannot print the PDF once created as epdfview gives a "Segmentation fault" and crashes out.

See forum thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=20377.

I'm on 217 with the hpijs drivers package.

It's got me foxed - and BarryK too possibly. Any ideas anyone?

That doesn't seem to be anything to do with CUPS-pdf, but anyway - you might have to try a different pdf reader like Xpdf or something if you need to print while it isn't fixed.

disciple wrote:That doesn't seem to be anything to do with CUPS-pdf, but anyway - you might have to try a different pdf reader like Xpdf or something if you need to print while it isn't fixed.

I'm willing to try this, so how should I go about downloading and installing xpdf?

I cannot see it as either a PET or a DotPup package, while the website has scary comments about compiling and making and so on which make me want to run away (bravely).

Nick

There are links to three versions at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8727
Colonel Panic recommends Adobe Reader 5, but it was very troublesome for me and other people too.

Also, if you install GTKLP, it can print pdf files - but only the whole file - not certain pages.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 03&t=17768

EDIT - it can print a selection of pages from a file - there is a space for extra options on the special tab. I've described some of them at http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Printing.

This is interesting - Opera doesn't seem to like either CUPS, or the PDF writer.

BTW are we likely to see v0.4 sometime, or has something happened to it?

I can confirm that Opera v. 8.01 and v. 9.10 work properly with CUPS and with the CUPS pdf writer. As I went through a few head-scratching months trying to get CUPS to work with my rather unpopular Xerox Phaser 3120, I have a suspicion that something is misconfigured. In my case, I had mistakenly overwritten two usblp files in /dev with some postscript files during an abortive CUPS configuration session. Once I identified and corrected that problem - and then chose an appropriate driver (not the easiest task) - everything regarding CUPS printing has gone swimmingly ever since.

With kind regards,
vovchik

Hmmm...
It seems like something funny must be going on with Opera (9.10) - I can't get it to print at all now, but other programs print fine.

pdf-writer updated to version 0.6. Skipped 0.4 & 0.5 because of the amount of code reorganization done and the number of changes implemented.

New features (via config file)
1) Run in a console-only mode
2) Print job completion notification
3) Customize duration of notification
4) Customize notification type Full (inlcude path) or brief (filename only)

Changes
1) Config file renamed to ~/.pdfwriter.conf (NB hidden file)
2) Set correct permissions on config file
3) Reorganized code to better accommodate console only option
4) On xdialog gtk-warning or gtk-critical errors, exit gracefully but log to /var/log/messages reason and suggest usingconsole only mode
5) Sanity check - remove additional invalid characters in the filename entered by the user
6) Now works on other distros (at least on zenwalk)
7) Changed "Device URI" from pdf-writer:/export/share/pdf/ to pdf-writer:/dev/null since this is not used at all by the pdf-writer backend

Bug Fixes
1) Fixed problem determining home directory for non-root users
2) increased height of some dialog boxes as some text was being hidden depending on theme/wm used
3) Fixed prob when files were printed from stdin. The filename .pdf(....) was used as the default filename

To do
Create gui for managing preferences

~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've attached two files:

The first is the tar.gz cups-pdf backend script "pdf-writer". To test download and install with petget or "tar xvfz -C / pdf-writer.tar.gz"

The second is a WIP manual for cups-pdf/pdf-writer.

Once testing goes ok it will be packaged into a .pet.

Dear jcoder,

On my machine, every one of your pdf writer incarnations worked fine, including the latest one. I hope you find time to do the preferences part, since I don't know how to get my gs to print out ascii files to pdf using a nice font. They all come out outlooking pretty ugly with a courier type face. I would much prefer dejavu mono. Do you know off hand where I can change the default (e.g. a config file)?

WIth thanks in advance,
vovchik

I don't think it desperately needs to work with spaces in the filename, but fixing that might be almost as easy as this:
If you select a directory with a space in the path, the job gets stuck in the queue and the printer goes offline as before. If you restart the job from CUPS, it gives you the location selection dialogue again, with the space replaced, and if you accept this location you get an error message and it prints it as /Using_the_fallback_C_locale..pdf

version 0.7

Changes
1) Changed preferences option USE_X to USE_XWINDOWS
2) Changed separator for preferences file to from space to ":" to accommodate MRUDs with spaces
3) Now prints to folders with spaces in their name
4) Now prints filename with spaces and
5) Added option in ~/.pdfwriter.conf for changing spaces to underscores
6) Some minor code fixes and clean up

Known Issues
Does not work correctly when printing the "Test Page" from the cups printer page. I'm looking into a universal fix for this (ie works on puppy and other distros).

NB
The documentation is to be updated to reflect these changes. BTW suggestions on additions/deletions/clarifications on the documentation is welcomed.

Great!

suggestions on additions/deletions/clarifications on the documentation

Where you say to restart CUPS, maybe put in an example or two of how to do this (it's not always the same, is it?).
So I would do this in a terminal:

It mostly seems very good.
If I cancel a print (In 2.16.1), it prints it as "/Created Using the fallback C locale..pdf"

Also I think in the documentation you forgot to update the lpadmin command for /dev/null ?

I forgot to mention that you should remove the old preferences file before using the new version.

rm ~/.pdfwriter.conf