FC2 and OO.org Printer Admin

[Marc Schwartz]

On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 23:52, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:

> It would appear that on Jun 1, Marc Schwartz did say:

snip of OP to save space.

>  
>  Thank You! for bringing this up Marc, I haven't had time (yet) to pursue
>  this very far yet, it's in my todo list, about three items down from the
>  top... (yesterday it was only two items down... Priorities su^H^H vacuum.)
>  But I'll tell you what I've found so far...
> 
>  Note in my FC1 ~/.openoffice dir the link was named spadmin not
>  oopadmin...

Yep.  I checked a backup and it was indeed spadmin for FC1. Of course,
now under FC2 it is ~/.rhopenoffice1.1 rather than ~/.openoffice.
Wouldn't it make sense to be ~/.fcopenoffice1.1 if one is going to
change it from the default?  ;-)

After not seeing a response during the day, I figured, well Marc, that
usually means it has either been discussed to death before on the list
and/or it has been filed in Bugzilla. I may be a bit dense at times, but
I can usually take a hint after a reasonable time has passed...  ;-)

I went back and checked the list archives again and did not come up with
anything of value, presuming that I am using the proper key words.

So, I checked Bugzilla. Sure enough, there is the following:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=124655

There has been no official confirmation there that I see, but it does
seem like this feature (spadmin) is missing from FC2. I have added
myself to the cc: list.

I must admit, that I do like the better integration with CUPS and
presumably this is still in something of a state of flux. So presumably
with time it will get better. Perhaps the missing spadmin is part of the
transition. If so, it would be nice to get official confirmation.... 

>  I too miss spadmin's pdf converter set up as it let me specify the
>  output directory. I also used spadmin to set up a fax send printer,
>  which not only eliminated the assorted file conversions and file
>  cleanup tasks involved with using the fax send script at the command
>  line, but when I sent faxes with it the recipients told me the output
>  pages were clearer. 

snip

I did some checking on the PDF Converter and if my read is correct, the
entry in the old FC1 ~./openoffice/user/psprint/psprint.conf file shows
the 'distiller' command to be:

/usr/bin/gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="(OUTFILE)" -

The above may wrap to two lines.

Thus, it would seem to use gs to do the PDF conversion. How this is
different from the command used to do the PDF Export, I am unsure. All I
know is that the former would properly print embedded EPS images in
OO.org documents converted to PDF formats, whereas the latter would only
show the 'frame' placeholder along with the PS file title.

I have managed a workaround tonight, which is to set up a generic
postscript printer using the system-config-printer-gui. I can then print
a OO.org document with an embedded EPS graphic to a PS file using the
generic printer and then use ps2pdf to convert to the final PDF file.

This will suffice for the time being.

The only glitch at this point seems to be a problem with psnames in the
PS file. When displaying the PS file generated via the above process
using gs, I get:

DEBUG: no psname was provided.

I am wondering if this is due to PS font mapping issues. If anyone has a
fix for this, I love to hear about it. If my memory is correct, using
spadmin, there was a font replacement table for the printer
configuration. Perhaps the lack of this is causing the above warning.

> Since the oo111 help instructions still say to use spadmin I think the
> spadmin.bin is supposed to be there. ( I wonder if it would work to copy
> the spadmin.bin from my backup FC1 installation... I mean, what can it
> hurt? With the tighter cups integration I suppose I might break
> ooffice's ability to print at all?  But since it would be only a user
> process It would at worst only break it for that user, right? (in which case
> a user ~/.openoffice/setup (uninstall) followed by a user call to ooffice
> which should at that point trigger the user installation process...)Worth
> a try. If/when I get the time to try it (maybe next weekend) I'll let you
> know how it turned out... 

snip some more...

I am unsure about the mixing and matching of versions. If indeed it is
the intent to move away from spadmin, which seems a reasonable
possibility in light of the CUPS integration, then bringing spadmin
forward from an earlier version may not be the proper course of action.
Perhaps this is an early introduction of some of the things to come in
OO.org 2.0, though I have not done any research to lend credence to that
thought.

If you do try it though, let me know what you find.

I hope that above helps to some extent. At least for the time being,
there is a workaround possibility for PS -> PDF printing.

Regards,

Marc