187 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
187 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
<HTML
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><HEAD
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><TITLE
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>What's missing?</TITLE
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><META
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NAME="GENERATOR"
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CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK
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REL="HOME"
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TITLE="The Printing HOWTO"
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HREF="index.html"><LINK
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REL="PREVIOUS"
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TITLE="Serial printers under lpd"
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HREF="serial.html"><LINK
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REL="NEXT"
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TITLE="Credits"
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HREF="credits.html"></HEAD
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><BODY
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CLASS="sect1"
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BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
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TEXT="#000000"
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LINK="#0000FF"
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VLINK="#840084"
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ALINK="#0000FF"
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVHEADER"
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><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
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WIDTH="100%"
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BORDER="0"
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CELLPADDING="0"
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CELLSPACING="0"
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><TR
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><TH
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COLSPAN="3"
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ALIGN="center"
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>The Printing HOWTO</TH
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="serial.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="80%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="credits.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect1"
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><H1
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CLASS="sect1"
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><A
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NAME="development"
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></A
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>18. What's missing?</H1
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><P
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>Many of the parts for a complete printing system do not exist yet.
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Projects are underway to address most of these, although most have
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not yet produced running useful code, and efforts to standardize
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the necessary protocols and APIs are in their infancy.</P
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><DIV
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><H2
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><A
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NAME="AEN2285"
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></A
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>18.1. Plumbing</H2
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><P
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>There's a general problem with getting all the parts to talk to
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one another; especially in a spooler-independent way. This
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problem manifests itself most noticeably in the pathetic
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application support for control over all the "usual" printing
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features. There is simply no way for an application writer to get
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information about printers, jobs, etc; no standardized way to
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submit jobs; no good way to get job status back; nor even really a
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standardized way to generate print data (although most of the new
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desktop systems offer desktop-specific facilities for doing this).</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><H2
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><A
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NAME="AEN2288"
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></A
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>18.2. Fonts</H2
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><P
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>Font handling on free systems is rather awkward. The display, the
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printer, the application, and the data files should ideally all
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have access to the same fonts. Unfortunately this was simply not
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the case. With the advent of xft2 and fontconfig - which the newest distributions will start deploying - this should finally be solved. Redhat 8.0 is AFAIK the first distro that uses xft2.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><H2
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CLASS="simplesect"
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><A
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NAME="AEN2291"
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></A
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>18.3. Drivers</H2
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><P
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>There is still some work to be done on free software drivers. Although the drivers have improved a lot the last several years, not all printers are supported.</P
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><P
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>Printer vendors have a major role to play in this area. With the increasing popularity of Linux it is getting really hard for them to simple ignore this userbase.</P
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></DIV
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
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WIDTH="100%"
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BORDER="0"
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CELLPADDING="0"
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CELLSPACING="0"
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="serial.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="index.html"
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ACCESSKEY="H"
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>Home</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="credits.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Serial printers under lpd</TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Credits</TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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></DIV
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></BODY
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></HTML
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> |