[RULE] PDQ, and low resource printing with CUPS

[M. Fioretti]

Hello,

sometimes ago, both on this list and in other places, I mentioned PDQ
(Print Don't Queue) as a low resource printing alternative to lpd or
CUPS. I must correct myself: PDQ may indeed require less disk space,
but (quoting from the Linux Printing HOWTO):

##################################################################
PDQ is not without flaws: most notably it processes the entire job
before sending it to the printer. This means that, for large jobs, PDQ
may simply be impractical—you can end up with hundreds of megs being
copied back and forth on your disk. Even worse, for slow drivers like
the better quality inkjet drivers, the job will not start printing
until Ghostscript and the driver have finished processing. This may be
many minutes after submission.
########################################################

This means the best solution remains CUPS+foomatic, possibly coupled with
Eugene's vacuum scripts, and/or with a script to be ran by slinky
right after installing, to remove all unnecessary files.

The standard cups and foomatic RPMs in RH 9 take about 25 MB, and they
contain:

1313 drivers or config files for all supported printers
several documentation duplicated in pdf and html format
man pages in different languages

There is room for disk space reduction. Don't forget, however, that in
some cases leaving out too much may backfire: removing all but the one
needed driver from a print server in the lab, which will drive the
same printer until it falls apart, makes a lot of sense. Doing it on a
laptop which may be plugged every time to a different device... ah
well.

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti


-- Marco
Fioretti m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it Red Hat for low memory
http://www.rule-project.org/en/

Non è il concetto di intelligenza extraterrestre a essere difficile da
afferrare. E' il concetto opposto che incontra resistenze. I. Asimov.


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