FC2, Cups, [ooffice cups integration], gs, & fax drivers

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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FC2, Cups, [ooffice cups integration], gs, & fax drivers

Hello, I'm not really sure where to take this question. But Since I
only have this problem with FC2, I figure this list is a good place to
start. 

I Know that there is a bugzilla about spadmin (the star/open office
printer administration tool) being missing from oo 1.1.1 on FC2. I added
my point about fax drivers to it...

I'm also having problems with converting an pdf2gs with the pdf of a
resume I wanted to fax to someone. This might be oo's export to pdf OR
the gs conversion... (see below)

I don't know jack about cups. I wanted to find out what I'd have to do
to set up a "fax" printer driver or at least a "print to file.ps"
But neither "$ man cups" nor "$ info cups" found anything at all,
If someone knows where I can find a nice easy to follow how-to for
setting up either of those as cups printer drivers, please let me know.


I used to LIKE ooffice's fax capabilities. I could "fax" ooffice
documents more cleanly (and with much less work) using the fax send
script that spadmin allowed me to add to the ooffice printer list than I
could when I exported the document to pdf, and then did at least the 1st
three of these shell commands:
$ pdf2ps doc.pdf doc.ps
$ fax send $faxnum doc.ps
$ rm doc.ps.[0-9][0-9][0-9]
$ rm doc.ps
$ rm doc.pdf
I'm not sure why it was cleaner unless perhaps ooffice converted directly
from it's native format to ps rather than having to convert to an
intermediate file type first? But with a pop up field to supply the fax
number, Printing an ooffice doc to the fax driver was a LOT easier as it
took care of all the above in the background. 

Now with oo 1.1.1 on FC2, I can't find a way to add the fax/printer driver
(due I think to the cups integration that is supposed to automatically
set up any/all cups printers for use in oo???) 

Also I don't know if it's a problem with oo's export to pdf function or
with ghostscript. But when I export a document to pdf using either of
the two export menu choices ( and any of the three resolution choices)
The resulting pdf file looks good with xpdf, But formats badly with
ghostview, This bad formatting can cause the bottom half of page one to
be superimposed on the top half of page 1 (offset to the right an inch or
so). The ps file that results from running pdf2ps on this has the same
problem with page 1... 

And since pdf2ps AND ghostview both use gs I cant rule out gs as
the source of this problem 


I'm about to postpone this message, reboot into my FC1, Mount the FC2
partition, and test FC1's version of
pdf2ps
And try using FC1's oo to use the "PRINT" to pdf print driver of the
same document that I'm having trouble with in FC2...

Then when I return to FC2 I can do some empirical testing to see if
this is the way oo is exporting the pdf (both the pdf2ps and the fax
send commands get this error: "DEBUG: no psname was provided." which may
be part of the problem?) or perhaps the way gs is processing the pdf2gs.

+++++++++++++++
The results of that were:

Well I think now that the culprit is the export to pdf option in
ooffice...

While in FC1 I used pdf2ps on all three resolutions of pdf I'd exported
from FC2's ooffice, I also opened the same open office document with
FC1's ooffice and made both an export to pdf AND used an spadmin created
"PRINT" to pdf driver to make one more pdf...

Then I returned to FC2 and used pdf2ps on the two pdf files I just made
with FC1's oo, and then opened each one of the ps files with ghostview
and the pdf that was made with FC1's ooffice's spadmin print to pdf was
the only one that didn't wind up ruined... Though it still complained:

"DEBUG: no psname was provided."


FC2 export to pdf -> FC2 pdf2ps -> FC2 ghostview = bad file
FC2 export to pdf -> FC1 pdf2ps -> FC2 ghostview = bad file
FC1 export to pdf -> FC2 pdf2ps -> FC2 ghostview = bad file
FC1 PRINT to pdf -> FC2 pdf2ps -> FC2 ghostview = good file


+++++++++++++++

Any help/suggestions/URL's that can help me solve the problem of faxing
ooffice documents from FC2 would be appreciated...

:r $sig/bigmouth

- -- 
|				      ---   ---
|     Joe (theWordy) Philbrook	      <o>   <o>
|	   J(tWdy)P			  ^
|	<<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>		/---\	"bla bla bla..."
|					\___/	"...and bla..."

   At least I know my mouth is running, I just can't find the off button!



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