The Add Printer Wizard
for ∪︀
Clicking on the left-most icon on the toolbar
in the upper part of the window starts the
Add Printer Wizard
.
This wizard steps you through various screens to install a new
printer. At present this Wizard works for ∪︀ and the
RLPR environment module. The number of steps depend
on the actual print-subsystem which is active and available to you on
your box.
Starting
The welcome screen informs you that you can go back any time to
change a setting.
The &tdeprint; wizard introduction screen
The introduction screen of the printer wizard
Backend Selection
Choose the backend
protocol that ∪︀ is supposed to
use with your new printer. There are:
local printer (serial, parallel, USB)
remote LPD queue
SMB shared printer (&Windows;)
Network Printer (TCP, &HP; JetDirect,
AppSocket)
Network printer with &IPP; (&IPP;/HTTP)
File printer
serial fax /modem printer
Class of Printers
If some choices are grayed out, they are not available. For
example, you may have no FAX backend software or no modem installed to
use it.
Choosing your Printer system
Choosing your Printer System
Direct Network Setting
The contents of your next screen is dependent on your choice in
the previous screen. If you know the details, just type them in to
configure your network settings directly.
In other cases the wizard can scan the network for you, to help you
decide which setting could be useful.
&tdeprint; wizard network scan
In the &tdeprint; wizard, you can enter network details
directly, or you can scan the network
automatically.
Information Retrieval by Scanning the Network
If you use one of the network connections (remote
LPD, SMB, remote ∪︀, network
printer with &IPP;), you have an option for scanning the network. Be careful
when applying this; in some environments network scanning is considered
to be hostile and harmful!
In the case of SMB, &tdeprint; will use the
Samba utilities nmblookup and
smbclient (which need to be installed for this to
work) to retrieve the information it presents in a tree
structure.
In the case of &IPP; (Port 631) and TCP
Network/AppSocket (Port 9100) &tdeprint; will try to open the port and,
if successful, send an ipp-get-printer-attribute
request to the printer. For newer &HP; printers the latter usually
works, because they support both AppSocket and &IPP;.
Some printers or manufacturers use other port numbers for direct
TCP/IP printing. You may need to look up which one to use. The
Settings button in the dialog lets you configure
your scan, including IP addresses, ports and
timeout to use.
Once again: be careful not to be mistaken for an intruder on
your network, if you use the scanning technique.
&tdeprint; wizard network configuration dialog
In the &tdeprint; wizard, you can enter parameters to have the
wizard scan parts of your network.
Printer Model Selection
The hardest part is probably the Printer Model
Selection
. In former years the situation was difficult, because
there were hardly any drivers to find. The difficulty now is there are too
many; though some of them are very good, many are quite broken.
If you have a current database
of available drivers
on your system, select the manufacturer in the left part of the window
first, then the device model in the right part. This split window shows
all &PPD;s found by ∪︀ in its standard repository of installable
&PPD;s. This repository normally is /usr/share/cups/model/. If you want your
driver to be found automatically by ∪︀ and &tdeprint;, place it in
there.
Driver Selection
On the next screen you will see a description of the driver
selected previously. This description is extracted from the actual &PPD;
used.
For a real &PostScript; printer never try to
install a Foomatic
or Gimp-Print
&PPD;,
even if it is offered. You won't be happy with it. Instead find the
original &PPD; from the manufacturer, preferably the one written for
&Windows; NT and use it.
Some &Linux; distributions have supplied for ∪︀ every
possible combination of Ghostscript filters
and foomatic
&PPD; files they could find on the net.
Many of these are quite useless; they were generated a year ago, when
the people at www.linuxprinting.org began
their first experiments with supplying third party &PPD;s for
∪︀. Although dubbed Alpha
at the time, these
started to take on a life of their own and can now be found at various
places on the net, doing ∪︀ no favors.
If you are not sure which ones to use go to:
http://www.linuxprinting.org
http://www.cups.org
And ask for help. At a later stage, a document detailing the
differences between the different driver and &PPD; models will appear at
http://tdeprint.sourceforge.net/
Watch out for this!
Via the Other... button you are able to
retrieve any &PPD; located somewhere on your available file
system.
Printer Test and Finding the Right Settings
Specify your first driver settings now. The most important one is the
default paper size. In many cases this is set to
Letter
. If you live in an A4
country and don't want your first test page to jam: now is the time to
prevent this.
You are ready to start a test print. Hit the
Test button.
Banner Selection
The last but one screen lets you select whether you want banners, and
which ones you want to use, to mark the beginning and/or end of every printjob
on that printer. You can also select and deselect banners before printing
in the job options dialogs.
If you need to use custom banners, copy them into /usr/share/cups/banners/ to make them
available for selection. They must be &PostScript; files,
however.
Finally: Baptizing Your New Printer
The last screen lets you insert a name for your new
printer.
The name must start with a letter and may contain numbers and
underscores with a maximum size of 128 characters. Conform to this if you
want to avoid erratic behavior of your ∪︀ daemon. The printer
names in ∪︀ are not case sensitive! This is a
requirement of &IPP;. So the names DANKA_infotec, Danka_Infotec and danka_infotec all represent the same
printer.
The Final Confirmation Screen