OT (?): Window Maker & Printing

[Johnson David]

On Monday 07 April 2003 12:12 pm, Marcel Dijk wrote:

> Is printing is *BSD like in DOS then? Every app has to find it's own
> way to print.
> I want to print an JPG with GIMP and text with gvim.

It's like neither DOS nor Windows. It's a completely different paradigm 
from either.

There is a printing subsystem underneath (typically lpr plus various 
print filters) that can print file directory without the application 
necessarily needing to do anything. To print a text file, for instance, 
type "lpr textfile.txt". When you print directly from an application 
(like Abiword for example), it merely converts the data to a postscript 
file, then calls the printing subsystem to print that postscript.

Setting up the printing subsystem is the hardest part, but once it's 
done, the rest is very easy, but not consistant. For GIMP you print 
from the application. For gvim you print from the shell after you are 
done editing. In either case, you can typically drag the file over to a 
printer icon (if set one up) in KDE or Gnome.

David