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Shared PDF Printer


chr1s

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Hi all,I'm wanting to do some PDF printing for users on our network (at work). All the clients are Windows PC's at the moment but this is a chance at getting a Linux box in to do a very useful task.Basically I noticed from my home setup of Mandrake 9.1 that (when Samba's up and running), there's a "PDF-Generator" printer shared out. I'd like to use this shared printer so that all our Windows PC's can create PDF documents. How can I go about this? I've seen a few documents online about how to set this up but it's from scratch. Since Mandrake 9.1 has it there as default I thought I'd check here first to see if there was an easy way of utilising it. So far I have the Linux PC up and running on our domain (using that Samba tool I posted about earlier - makes it sooooo easy) and I can see the PDF-Generator from a Windows PC. Is it just a case of selecting the right driver in Windows?Thanks in advance,Chris.

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Sorry ChrisIt sure looks like PDF printing over Samba does not have many adepts here, still there might be a hardcore Samba user who will step in one day and help you solve this . . . Rons got his printing over Samba solved, but there was no talk about PDF.I hope if you do find the solotion you will post it here for later reference. :):) Bruno

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nlinecomputers

Honestly I think that is a mistake on Mandrakes part. The default settings in Samba will replcatate all installed printers on the Linux box. PDF-generator is not a real printer but hooks in as a printer driver. So on the linux box if you choose to print to the PDF printer you get a dialog box asking you for file name and location to save the file. That can't be sent over SMB as it is not a real printer and no windows drivers exists for it. If you think about it that makes sense. All a printer driver does, even a fake driver like a PDF driver, is take your written information in your file and convert it into commands a printer can understand. Or in the case of a PDF it converts it into a file that Adobe Reader can read. All that is done on the home machine not the server. When you print to a samba server you send the same commands you would to the printer they just get moved over the network first. If you want a free PDF generator look at PDF-Creator for windows at:http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/PDFcreator

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Cheers for that - I'll check it out.You can set it up to do PDF. What you do is set the Windows PC to use a standard postscript driver but point at the Linux PDF printer. The "printer" on the Linux PC actually executes a command that runs ps2pdf to convert the file and put it into a shared directory that the user can then access. The one for Windows sounds like a plan though - cheers for that :)Chris.

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