Alan B. Pearce wrote:

>>Maybe what you need now is CUPS ...
>>
>>
>
>OK, Then it looks like I may be OK to do what I want.
>
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CUPS really is a savior for providing access to all the nifty printer
options but it's still geared towards PostScript printers which are
something of a rarity in the consumer market. Adding non postscript
printers to CUPS is very doable, but bot the most pleasent of tasks. I'm
not sure how other distros are doing it these days but RedHat 8 and
above have an incredible printer install tool (redhat-config-printer)
that can install very near any printer Linux can support in a minute,
share it, run a test page, etc...  It's got a GUI and a curses interface
as well.

In a corporate environment CUPS can be like the magic printer fairy, set
it up on all the machines to share printer information over the network
and then just plug a new machine in and every printer on your network
will magically show up in the machines queue list. Really sweet. Another
plus is that tools like qtcups
can be used in place of lp/lpr commands in old apps. Then when it goes
to print you are presented with a graphical print setup screen not
unlike Windows.

And of course, if you prefer to just print with no setup screens, you
can still just use lp commands. Kind of a best of all worlds right up
till you need to add
you new non PostScript printer that isn't supported by your distros
install tools.

-- Mike

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