Mac OS X | Drivers | Other Drivers | Printer UnPICTifier

Printer UnPICTifier - 1.0

Fixes a problem w/non-OS X IPP print servers

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All Time:	Not rated (0.0)
This Version:	Not rated (0.0)
Current Version:	1.0
Release Date:	2003-04-12
License:	Freeware
Downloads (this version):	2,073
Downloads (all versions):	2,073
Price:	Free

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Product Description:

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have wiped out the contents of the /var/spool/cups folder in order to get printing restored, you need to recreate the /var/spool/cups/tmp folder and give it the proper privileges as follows:

sudo mkdir /var/spool/cups/tmp
sudo chown daemon:admin /var/spool/cups/tmp
sudo chmod 1700 /var/spool/cups/tmp

This procedure will be handled by the installer in the next release.

Disclaimer:
Since this software replaces the IPP backend that ships with Jaguar (the original is saved with a ".orig" extension so that the software can be uninstalled), it should only be installed if you have non-OS X print servers and you are attempting to print to them from an OS X machine using Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). It should work just as well as the original for OS X servers, but I make no guarantees.

Description:
This is a little hack I threw together out of annoyance. It addresses a problem with certain Carbon apps and a custom print filter in Jaguar's CUPS distribution (Panther corrects this problem). Specifically, certain Carbon apps, including Adobe Acrobat Reader, produce print jobs in a PICT-encoded Postscript format. On OS X machines, the custom pictwpstops filter converts the job to straight Postscript before the normal CUPS filters get ahold of it.

Because of the way CUPS works, that conversion is done on the server side for remote (shared) printers. As long as the server is running OS X, the job is accepted and prints. However, if the server does not run OS X, e.g. a Linux server, it doesn't know what to do with a PICT-encoded Postscript file, so it just rejects the request. On the OS X side, Print Center repeatedly attempts to send the job to the server without success. This causes the job to hang up in the local queue but, because the printer is remote, the job is not cancelable.

This software fixes that problem by pre-filtering PICT-encoded Postscript into straight Postscript (which is a format recognized by all IPP print servers) using Apple's custom filter before sending the print job to the server.

Operating System Requirements:

This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:

Mac OS X 10.2

Additional Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.2-10.2.8 (CUPS 1.1.15)

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Reviews Reviews Troubleshooting Usage Tips Developer Notes Commentary Featured Reviews

I didn't find an option to use ASCII for sending... - Version: 1.0, 6/19/2003 06:28PM PST

TripleF3000

however, using "Save As" PostScript and dropping the file onto the printer in Print Center worked. This is under Acrobat full version, don't know if the Reader can save as PostScript as well.

The easiest thing… - Version: 1.0, 4/14/2003 06:39AM PST

nbfa

to do is to send your job via ascii instead of binary. It's fat, but it works. The CUPS-supplied pictwpstops filter expects the Document Control Structuring (DCS) declaration to indicate where ascii ends and binary begins, but most apps, including Adobe's (who created the DCS standard) don't follow it. The filter will then just process the whole binary output as binary PS, which is rather malformed. Deliver it via IPP (or even lpr) to another non-MOSX print server running an original CUPS 1.1.18 distro and it will run the pstops filter, but junk in = junk out. The PS printer will then not know whether to use BCP or TBCP to process the incoming, malformed PS. I haven't tried this, but it's intriguing. CUPS 1.1.19 should have new filters for this situation, I hear.