The Answer to the Question I Could Not Answer

... and it wasn't even me

Previously, on as the Linuxworld turns: As noted in "Lab Results", a question was posed about how to use a printer that Linux did not support, from Linux, even if the printer had to be attached to an intermediary system. I had no idea how to answer it, which was not making me happy. A fellow BMC employee (Update: Seeing comment: Ok... Contractor. Big deal. He works here. For now, he is ours!) was even more bugged by the whole thing.

If you look at the comments section to my weblog entry "Lab Results", you'll see an entry from Richard Meyer, who works here at BMC. The question about using non-Linux supported printers from Linux continued to bug him. BMC people (even the contractors... :) ) are often like that: they like to solve problems. Here then is a not from him about a possible solution (I did some HTML formatting for clarity, but it is otherwise all his):

Hi Steve,  

That question you were asked in Toronto just won't stop bugging me, so I asked about in one of our LUGs here in Oz, and 1 person gave me a solution that his brother uses, which I will append hereto:

Richards question to the LUG: What he needs is some way to take the print requests from the Linux boxen to the Windows servers and let Windows do the real printing.

He wishes to start moving Linux desktops into the mix. How does he print from the Linux boxes? Is there a Proggie for windows that'll take Postscript from the Linux boxes and spew it out on the printers maybe? Set up a virtual printer that produces PDFs and get the windows boxes to print them?

Answers that came back from the query:

SAMBA doesn't seem to offer this as an option. My brother has a Canon winprinter. It works OK if you install Ghostscript and Redmon on windows. You make a new network printer that filters through the ghostscript command and prints natively to the Winprinter.

The Linux (and Mac) boxes just use the printer as a regular PS printer. You can even take advantage of some of the other groovy features in the printer if you have a PPD file that supports them. It's been working OK for my bro for over 12 months.

The only thing he bitches about is that GS pops up a DOS window every time someone prints. I'm sure you can configure that behaviour out of it though.

Cut a long story short, unless there's Linux drivers for it you're going to need to:

1. Toss it out and buy a real printer (preferred)
2. GS and Redmon and pay the Windows tax on your printer (yuck)
3. Try and sue the printer manufacturers to get them to cover the cost of the Windows OS which they are forcing you to use even though it's just a printer and should be OS-agnostic (yeah right)

Cheers,
A

I think you're looking for option (2) although (1) and (3) have a lot to recommend them.  ;-)   Someone else suggested:

Richard is correct: Only option "2", and possibly the last suggestion will be of use to the person that asked me the question: He was pretty clear in the session that, at least for now,  the printers were there to stay.

In fact, if I had been thinking in the session, I would have realized I was handing out the OpenCD 7.02, which has PDFCreator on it:  A package that lets any MS Windows program print, and have it create a PDF instead. It should have been a short jump from there to the idea that PDF's are transportable media...

I had never heard of Redmon, so I looked it up with Google. Interesting program. It creates a redirection port so that what looks like a PS printer on the network really redirects the input stream to another program, commonly Ghostscript. This is the overview verbiage from their web page that I linked back there on the word "Redmon":

The RedMon port monitor redirects a special printer port to a program. RedMon is commonly used with Ghostscript and a non-PostScript printer to emulate a PostScript printer.

RedMon can be used with any program that accepts data on standard input.

Using RedMon you create a redirected printer port. If you connect a Windows printer driver to the redirected printer port, all data sent to the redirected port will be forwarded by RedMon to the standard input of a program. The output of this program can be sent to different printer port, or the program can generate whatever output it desires.

A PostScript Windows printer redirected to a RedMon port can shared on a network. When this printer is configured to use Ghostscript and a non-PostScript printer, it appears as a PostScript printer to other network clients.

RedMon can also be used with an lpr client to provide transparent access to printers on Unix hosts. This is useful under Windows 95/98. Windows NT already has an lpr port monitor so there is no point in using RedMon for this. Another alternative is to use RedMon with PrintGLN, an HPGL pen plotter emulator.

I don't have MS Windows with non-Linux compatible printers sitting around to try this with easily. I took option '1'.

But I can't see why this wouldn't work.

Thanks Richard!