Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [275]
Most distributions ship with Foomatic or GIMP Print, so check for those packages. Sometimes they're called something else, and occasionally they're bundled with still more printer definitions. If you fail to install any printer definitions, you'll see a very limited set of printers when you configure printing.
Sometimes multiple printer definitions are available for a single printer—for instance, separate definitions in the Foomatic and GIMP Print packages, or even multiple definitions in a single package. In such cases, you may want to try all the available definitions to see which one works best with your printer and the types of documents you print. Sometimes the developers give you a hint by specifying in the configuration menus that one definition is recommended over the others.
Additional printing software
CUPS (or an LPD printing system) is a practical necessity for printing from Linux. For most printers, Ghostscript and Ghostscript driver definitions are also practical necessities. Several additional tools are often highly desirable, but may not be necessary in all cases:
enscript or nenscript
These commands were described earlier in this chapter. They help format plain text as PostScript or in other ways, which can be very helpful.
groff
This program is the open source implementation of the roff typesetting system, which enables creation of prettily formatted documents from text-mode files using troff/nroff markup codes. Although many users today prefer GUI word processors for this task, groff is still required by some tools, and can be used more directly, as well.
TEX and LATEX
The TEX package is a high-end document processing system, and LATEX is an extension to this package. These tools are favored by many mathematicians, scientists, computer scientists, and engineers for creating files. Some Linux documentation comes in the form of TEX or LATEX files, although such documents are also usually available in other formats.
Lout
This package is also worthy of consideration as an efficient and compact package to format text documents for PostScript output. It supports Level 2 PostScript and the Adobe Structuring Conventions, takes comparatively little memory, and comes with good enough documentation to learn quickly. Lout doesn't create an intermediate output form; it goes directly from markup input to PostScript output.
netpbm and pbmplus
These programs support a wide variety of graphics file format conversions. (Such formats have to be converted to PostScript before you try to print them.)
Ghostview
This package provides display tools to view PostScript files in an X Window System environment, and also provides PostScript and PDF support for other packages, such as your web browser.
ImageMagick
This program lets you display a large number of graphics formats in an X window and convert many file formats to other file formats. (It uses Ghostview and Ghostscript when it needs to display a PostScript image.) Most of the graphics files that you can print can also be displayed using ImageMagick.
Fax packages
If you want to support fax devices, you can use the tiffg3 utility with Ghostscript to output Group III fax format files. To control a Class 1 or Class 2 fax modem on your Linux host, you can use the efax package, which is provided in many distributions, or you can install and configure the more capable, but more complex, FlexFax or HylaFax packages.
Some of these tools are covered elsewhere in this book. Most require little configuration, and all are primarily user-level tools. Be aware that this list is not comprehensive; Linux printing tools are extremely plentiful, and range from simple text formatting tools to sophisticated word processors and graphics applications.
Configuring Printer Hardware
The first order of business when configuring a printer is configuring the hardware . You must verify that your printer is compatible with Linux, check its physical interface to the computer, and verify