Bert Freudenberg bert@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
How about using CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System, which was just licensed by Apple (http://www.cups.org/)
The CUPS API is LGPL so would work fine with Squeak. Alternatively it might be possible to write a CUPS client in Squeak as the protocol is HTTP based.
Does anyone have experience with CUPS?
I agree that if you want serious printing in Squeak, then writing either a CUPS or LPD client (or both) makes a lot of sense.
However, I believe this misses the point of the print routines in Squeak. The point, as I understand, is that new users can easily print out an image of their creations in Squeak. For this use, setting up an LPD or CUPS server is too much work if you don't happen to have one already.
Similarly, I don't even know that we should get involved in printing for more serious users. Most serious Squeakers don't print, anyway -- the point of Squeak in general is to make a new kind of medium that won't even work on paper. Even the occasional guy that will want to (e.g. they're making a book), is very likely to also want to fiddle around with it before printing it out. E.g., they'll touch it up with PhotoShop, or they'll inline it into a latex document.
Anyway, for those ignoring my crabbing--e.g. Squeak looks more like a Smalltalk platform to you than a multimedia authoring environment--I use CUPS regularly and can say that it works fine for me. It's easier to set up than either version of lpd I've tried. The server handles a variety of common formats, including PDF, PS, text, and various image formats. It's protocol is based on HTTP, but that's all I know about it.
-Lex
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