[K12OSN] Re: CUPS update breaks landscape printing from OS X to HP printers

[Jon Harder]

Jon Harder wrote:
> The bad news is that users on OS X (10.3 and 10.4) have lost
> the ability to print landscape documents. It doesn't
> do the 90 degree rotation. I use mainly HP printers (on old
> Apple 8500 worked fine). PCs do not seem to be affected.

I solved this problem by writing a CUPS backend filter (I used ruby)
that strips out the "rotate" and "translate" postscript commands
just before the print job is submitted to the printer. I'm still
testing, but I looks like it is working without any bad side effects.

This also lays the ground work for fixing some other printing problem
I have been having. Accellerated Reader is notorious for not allowing
one to choose a printer, so it sends reports to the default printer,
which for Macs is the last printer used. This is often an expensive
color printer. Now those printouts are automatically redirected to
a monochrome printer. Next I want to do something about the incompatiblity
caused when Photoshop prints to HP printers using binary mode for postscript.

--
Jon Harder
Mountain Lake (Minnesota) Public Schools