From: smirzo@example.com
Ivan Shmakov writes:
>>>>>> On 2025-01-16, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>
> > I suspect I imagine wrong how things actually work. I thought
> > perhaps there would be a command line such as ``lpr --pages 7-14''.
>
> As has already been pointed in this thread, CUPS, a fairly
> common choice for a printer spooler in GNU/Linux systems,
> provides lp(1) command that does have just such an option.
Thanks for the information. It turns out I'm not being able to print
two-sided-long-edge with CUPS and my Brother HL-L2360DW. I resorted to
using /etc/printcap and lpd's lpr (not CUPS's lpr) because I can then
set my printer to always do two-sided-long-edge, which is nearly 100% of
the way I print.
> > Now I believe a program like evince generates a PostScript of
> > the pages you asked it to and then sends this complete PostScript
> > document of the pages you requested to a pipe or file on disk
> > that lpr sends to the printer.
>
> AIUI, traditional lpd(8) / lpr(1) do require the file to be
> preprocessed in such a way before it is submitted for printing,
> but even then, they do /not/ require for the file to be
> PostScript: it's possible to setup the respective filters to
> accept other formats, such as PDF.
That's what I did as well. I use a filter called ps2pcl.
lp|remote|brother|Brother HL-L2360DW:\
:lp=9100@BRWB052162167A6:\
:if=/usr/local/libexec/ps2pcl:\
:sh:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:
But today I learned that the Brother HL-L2360DW supports PostScript and
I was able to set it up that way with CUPS. I just don't use because I
never want two-sided-short-edge or one-sided, which is all I can get
with CUPS for whatever reason.
> > So, if qpdf doesn't do the same, I'm out of luck in terms of
> > printing with lpr. But I think I can find a program that takes
> > page ranges and transformations like scaling and produces a
> > PostScript document that I can send to lpr, so I can use qpdfview
> > and use the command line to print stuff out.
>
> I'm not too familiar with qpdf(1) (and I don't think I've ever
> used qpdfview [*]), but it does have a --pages option. E. g.:
Turns out qpdfview is a pretty usable PDF viewer and it's the one I'm
using the most here. I think qpdfview is the closest thing to
SumatraPDF (on Windows), my favorite.
> $ qpdf --empty --pages in.pdf 5-8 -- out.pdf
> $ qpdf in.pdf --pages . 5-8 -- out.pdf
Thanks! That works.
> (The second variant preserves the input document metadata,
> which isn't probably of much use for printing anyway.)
Good to know. Sometimes we produce PDF for screen viewing.
> ... A somewhat little-known fact is that once uncompressed, PDF
> is largely a text file (perhaps unsurprising, given it comes
> from the same company that created PostScript), though employing
> byte offsets rather unrestrictedly.
>
> qpdf(1) has a --qdf option that undoes compressesion and annotates
> the file in such a way that the companion fix-qdf program can
> fix the byte offsets, at least in certain cases, thus allowing the
> PDF file to be edited with a text editor. (Though probably using
> a library, such as PDF::API2 for Perl, would be more practical
> than trying to, say, adapt sed(1) for automated edits in this case.)
You seem to know a lot about PostScript. So here's a question. When I
want to print two-sided-long-edge, is that a command included in the
PostScript document itself (and then sent to the printer)?
--- SoupGate-DOS v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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