YaST2 Printer configurator (printconf) should help user to set up local and
network printers.
Requires: lprng and lpdfilter.
Does not work with CUPS!!!
History: apsfilter was the filtering software used in SuSE Linux till
version 7.3. In 8.0 packages lprold (original bsd lpr) and
plp were dropped and apsfilter was dropped in favor of
lpdfilter.
For understanding the printer configuration problems you should keep in mind
that there is a difference between physical device - Printer and
logical device - Queue. There can be any number of queues assigned to
one printer. SuSE printing scheme uses this fact. New printer database is
designed with the goal to simplify creation of more queues with different
settings for one printer. Typicaly for color inkjet printer there will be up
to 4 automaticaly configured queues: lp, color,
high and photo, where lp is a fast monochrome
queue. Another configurations may be available for manual configuration: the
same as mentioned but with an alternative driver, higher or lower resolutions
or other special parameters. When we talk about pritner database item used by
a printer queue, we say configuration of the queue.
There can be special kind of queue - raw queue. This queue doesn't
perform filtering and sends the data to the printer unchanged. Hence there is
no connection with the printer database.
Another special kind of queue is ascii queue. This queue performs
filtering but it prints all files as texts. For example when you print
postscript file on an ascii queue, you get the postscript source out of the
printer.
lpdfilter has replaced apsfilter in SuSE linux 8.0. Although it is much better than apsfilter it still isn't ideal when comparing to cups. In cups, access to all the types of queues have the same interface. LPRng isn't bundled together with lpdfilter which means that users may but needn't use only lpdfilter, they may use whichever filter they want. But YaST2 can edit only queues created by YaST2 using lpdfilter.
In general there are 2 types of print queues. Queue with filtering and raw queue.
We can divide queues by connection. See spec_connection.html for connection reference. But from the viewpoint of printconf there are no internal differences between various types of queues. The only difference is whether queue performs filtering or is raw. Note that forwarding queues are always raw (FIXME: ensure that "raw" is set to true for this type of queue and check the tests for showing "test" button.) and other queues are filtering by default. Despite of the possibility of changing "prefilter queue for remote printer" to raw, it has no sense to do it. If you want raw forwarding queue, use "forwarding queue" instead. TODO: Currently it is only possible to create prefilter queue to forwarding queue. It should be possible to create a prefilter queue to any kind of queue.
Actually there are 3 types of workflow.