2006-05-04CUPS & tools
CUPS is a print server, accessible over IPP. It is designed primarily for
unix, but the client libraries can be ported to most systems. The CUPS server lets you offload your print jobs
to the central print server. Your job as client is to generate an image format that CUPS understands (postscript,
text, image, ...). CUPS will render the job into the printer's native language.
The advantage is that printer management is really central. You don't have to notice that your default printer
is replaced with another model or brand. Advanced post-processing like n-up printing are done by the server too.
CUPS comes with some command-line clients. Nice, but not too friendly.
XPP is a lightweight, yet complete package for handling your print jobs. You can select printer & printer options.
It's written upon the FLTK toolkit, which e-circ tends to use too.
XPP on MacOSX
Not finding a proper for MacOSX on powerpc let me do the job myself.
As more people were looking for it, I make it available for download here.
Note that the FLTK library that I'm using is a modified version of the original 1.1.4. Licensing of it forces me to
give you the sources whenever you ask. The changes are not that remarkable, and I'm trying to put in official
source tree. Just don't expect the hot water.
This binary was build on a MacOSX 10.4.6 (Tiger I believe). It works for me, and I'm a little curious in how little
effort it takes for one to set it up on another system. It's just a single binary, put it somewhere into your PATH, and run!
XPP on win32
I also build xpp (using own fork of fltk, it's just really cross-platform) on win32. Combined with
Adobe's postscript driver, or even Miro$ofts own, it lets you print postscript
from any application to CUPS. Applying RedMon's
Redirection Port Monitor, you can set it up as win32 native printer too.
Using this setup eliminates the need for native win32 printer drivers for any printer.
You can download the XPP build here. Unzip & run.
Again, I'm convinced it'll run, but not 100% sure.
