Re: [gentoo-user] Print to cups printer from Windows - any good instructions?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Willie Wong <wwong@×××××××××.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 10:57:43AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>    Again, I don't imagine ANY of what we're talking about here will
>> work for a Windows machine printing to a Linux cups server if a Linux
>> machine on the same network cannot print to that server.
>
> Technically not true.
>
> I had a Lexmark Z810 inkjet that refused to print from my linux
> desktop, and the problem is almost certainly the print driver. But the
> inkjet printed just fine over the network from a Windows machine if I
> setup a raw queue and installed the bundled driver on the Windows
> machine.
>
> I eventually decided to just connect the printer to the Windows
> machine because it seems a bit silly to run a cups server just so the
> single Windows machine (and only that machine) on the network can
> print to it.
>
> W

OK, that's interesting to me in terms of understanding cups a bit
more. What I'm certainly not clear about is where printer drivers
reside in all these cases.

I have a MythTV backend server that I put cups & the printer on. I
loaded hplip on that machine and then the cups web interface could
install the printer and print test pages. That's all on the cups
server and seems simple and straight forward.

On my other Gentoo machines it seems that I've also had to install
hplip to talk to the printer. What's the hplip driver on the local
desktop machine actually doing? Is it doing anything? Is formating the
print data what's it sending across the network? Certainly not raw
pixels for the real printer on the cups server is it? Does it turn it
into PCL5/6 commands, or postscript or something? If the local driver
sends PCL5 data for instance then does the hplip driver at the other
end do anything or does incoming PCL5 data just get funneled to the
printer as 'raw' data.

On the two Windows machines XP is sending postscript (generic
postscript driver) and Vista is (I think) sending PCL5 as it's using
the standard HP driver for the printer.

I hope the question is at least reasonable as the data format at each
point in the network is really unclear to me. Maybe there's a good
site to read about this?

- Mark