From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 27 22:18:58 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B5CA106566B for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:18:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from prvs=0274ed8c24=johnl@iecc.com) Received: from gal.iecc.com (gal.iecc.com [64.57.183.53]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E02A8FC15 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:18:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 63912 invoked from network); 27 Oct 2011 22:18:56 -0000 Received: from leila.iecc.com (64.57.183.34) by mail1.iecc.com with QMQP; 27 Oct 2011 22:18:56 -0000 Date: 27 Oct 2011 22:18:34 -0000 Message-ID: <20111027221834.97213.qmail@joyce.lan> From: "John Levine" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <23529.1319749711@tristatelogic.com> Organization: X-Headerized: yes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Cc: rfg@tristatelogic.com Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:18:58 -0000 >>I'm not a huge fan of CUPS, but at this point it's the best of a bad >>lot. I find the queueing useful, since I often print documents long >>enough that I don't want to wait. > >I don't quite understand the issue you are raising john. $ lpr foo $ lpr bar $ lpr baz It will print the three files in a row, starting each when the previous one is done. Like, you know, a print queue. >John are you saying that my documents, some of which *start out* as >.PS files, are converted by CUPS to .PDF and thence (since I don't >have any printers that speak PDF) the document is then converted >*back* to Postscript for actual printing?? Seems that way, based on a little poking around. If I use something like evince, I think it will do whatever CUPS tells it to do. If I use the basic CUPS lpr command to print a .ps file, that's fast since there's nothing smart enough to do something stupid. >>I think this is a bug. > >If it is, then I think it may be a long-standing one. > >I did something very like what I just described doing on FreeBSD 8.2 also >back on my old FreeBSD 7.0 system which I first installed maybe three years >of more ago. My recollection is that CUPS on FBSD 7 printed a lot faster, although it also may have something to do with the fact that I used to use a USB to parallel thing, and since then I scored a print server card on ebay for about $15 and print over the network. (There are other computers on the network that other people print from, so this is an overall win.) R's, John