* Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> [120203 05:40]: > Stan Hoeppner wrote: > For whatever reason the folks around here seem to prefer lprng over > lpr. And of course the lpr command is also provided by cups-bsd / > cups. So there seem to be three flavors available.
There is a bit more to this matter than the package "lpr". About a decade ago, the package lprng ("ng" meaning "next generation") fixed most of the problems of the package lpr. Most importantly, the author of lprng carefully documented the procedure for configuring the printing system. And though lprng was carefully wrought and worked well, lprng nonetheless was an elaborate patch of a legacy printing system. In those days, getting printing configured properly was a somewhat complex post-installation process. Then cups was designed, and getting printing working properly in Linux suddenly was a fairly simple matter. Things went well until cups was purchased by Apple, since which event there have been some improvements in printing configuration and management and some regressions. And I miss the marvelous detailed cups test page, which Apple replaced with a primitive and ugly version. Today, "lpr" simply is one of the commands which cups recognizes; that is, cups controls the printer, and "lpr" is an element of the command set of cups. For example, I print a man page on the default laser printer with the command string "man -t packagename | lpr". And I print address labels on a dot-matrix printer with the command string "lpr -Poki labels". RLH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120203061819.GA4076@cromwell.tmiaf