XPrt Configuration

The X11r6.8 release from X.org (August 2004) is the first full release of X that contains fully functional X printing support. As of that release, the remainder of this page is probably obsolete.

Add Xprt configuration here...

This needs editing !

I stripped them to the basics and am attaching my working stuff. That's in prconfig.tgz . It's a gzipped tar file so the directory hierarchy is in it, you may be able to just unpack it in a place where it "just works".

The hierarchy in prconfig.tgz is etc/X11/xserver/print , you may want to put this in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/print or so.

Note that in some cases it is a good idea to bypass locale directories, I solved this by 

  cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver
  ln -s . C
which creates 
        dell: {76} l /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/
        total 8
        lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     backx           1 Nov 25 15:56 C -> .
which means that /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/C/print is the same as /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/print .

Oh well, so much for the boring part.

First a little background, you'll find this in the README more elaborately.

We all know an X server, it interfaces X apps to our screen hardware. In X11R6 they created a simulated frame buffer whose contents (a bitmap) an be put into a file for sending to a printer. Where a normal X server would draw pixels on a screen, Xprt draws in memory and then allows you to send the bitmap to a printer.

Ok, now for reasons unknown to me they never integrated Xprt with video X servers, which means that you need to run both. My test/Xm-2.1/print/test3 application opens the display :1 assuming that this is an Xprt. You'll find in the attachments how to do this in a nicer way, I'm just not there yet as to implementing all that stuff.

Ok so now if you start "Xprt :1 &" you'll see that it complains about not finding a configuration file (or so).

The main configuration file is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/print/Xprinters . An example file is in prconfig.tgz. It just says this : 

        #
        Augment_Printer_List    %none%
        #
        Printer lp lp1
The %none% means don't use fancy tricks to figure out which printers are attached to your UNIX, the Printer line defines two printers.

With that file Xprt would run for me, but it would not find /usr/bin/lp . (Because I don't have a /usr/bin/lp.)

As the Xprt.ps document shows, you can have more configuration files in a set of directories. The list included in prconfig.tgz is : 

        etc/X11/xserver/print/attributes/printer
        etc/X11/xserver/print/Xprinters
        etc/X11/xserver/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400/model-config
        etc/X11/xserver/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400/fonts.dir
On my system they're in /etc but I stripped of the leading / .

Let's have a look. print/attributes/printer contains : 

        #
        # Printer attributes file as described in §2.4
        #
        lp.descriptor:          this is my Epson
        lp1.descriptor:         Epson Stylus Color 400
        *xp-spooler-command:            /tmp/printit
        *.xp-model-identifier:          EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400

When you run test/Xm-2.1/print/test3, you'll see that it finds the descriptors from this file. Importantly this file also shows how to run another command than /usr/bin/lp. The /tmp/printit file I use contains this : 

        #!/bin/sh
        cat >/tmp/print.$$.ps
        ghostview /tmp/print.$$.ps &
        exit 0

This makes sure the file gets put in a file in /tmp, and then ghostview is run on it. Make sure to make /tmp/printit executable with chmod a+x /tmp/printit

I ship a couple more files in the prconfig.tgz to show how to use the model identifier, but they don't have sensible contents in my case.

Note finally that there's certainly some parts missing here. First, I appear to have found a way to get Xprt to output PostScript instead of PCL or something of the kind. Ideally it should produce the format that my printer understands, I'm currently better off with the PostScript.

Second, I don't have DtPrint or XmPrint in place so I cannot yet offer decent demo programs that work.

Actually you may only need the Xprt that I use. It has a bugfix in it and it's linked only to system libs : 

        dell: {34} ldd /home/danny/Hungry/X11r6.5.1/xc/programs/Xserver/Xprt
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40020000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4003e000)
                /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
This should be fine.

I've just stripped and compressed the Xprt, I'll upload it to http://users.skynet.be/danny.backx/download/Xprt-linux.gz

It should be this size : 

-rwxrwxr-x    1 danny    backx      963552 Mar 21 20:49 /tmp/Xprt-linux.gz
To use it, you would need some setup files that I'm attaching. 
dell: {28} du /etc/X11/xserver/print/
16      /etc/X11/xserver/print/attributes
8       /etc/X11/xserver/print/ddx-config/PostScript
8       /etc/X11/xserver/print/ddx-config/XP-RASTER
20      /etc/X11/xserver/print/ddx-config
11716   /etc/X11/xserver/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400/fonts
11724   /etc/X11/xserver/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400
11728   /etc/X11/xserver/print/models
11772   /etc/X11/xserver/print

I've made a tar.gz file which doesn't include the contents of the fonts directory, as this can be grabbed off the net or any recent X source distribution. It's on the X11R6.5.1 distribution on ftp.x.org for instance.

Here's a list : 

dell: {36} ls -l /etc/X11/xserver/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400/fonts
total 11712
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      382972 Dec 24  1996 AvantGarde-Book.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      422340 Dec 24  1996 AvantGarde-BookOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      399140 Dec 24  1996 AvantGarde-Demi.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      432472 Dec 24  1996 AvantGarde-DemiOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      319364 Dec 24  1996 Courier-Bold.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      348132 Dec 24  1996 Courier-BoldOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      327004 Dec 24  1996 Courier-Oblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      299848 Dec 24  1996 Courier.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      388912 Dec 24  1996 Helvetica-Bold.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      429360 Dec 24  1996 Helvetica-BoldOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      410500 Dec 24  1996 Helvetica-Oblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      357216 Dec 24  1996 Helvetica.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      405084 Dec 24  1996 LubalinGraph-Book.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      435380 Dec 24  1996 LubalinGraph-BookOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      411324 Dec 24  1996 LubalinGraph-Demi.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      448684 Dec 24  1996 LubalinGraph-DemiOblique.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      434736 Dec 24  1996 NewCenturySchlbk-Bold.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      442732 Dec 24  1996 NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      412788 Dec 24  1996 NewCenturySchlbk-Italic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      383500 Dec 24  1996 NewCenturySchlbk-Roman.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      423980 Dec 24  1996 Souvenir-Demi.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      449796 Dec 24  1996 Souvenir-DemiItalic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      384208 Dec 24  1996 Souvenir-Light.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      393492 Dec 24  1996 Souvenir-LightItalic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      357252 Dec 24  1996 Symbol.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      369068 Dec 24  1996 Times-Bold.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      380384 Dec 24  1996 Times-BoldItalic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      341196 Dec 24  1996 Times-Italic.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      339148 Dec 24  1996 Times-Roman.pmf
-rw-r--r--    1 danny    backx      478308 Dec 24  1996 ZapfDingbats.pmf
-rw-rw-r--    1 danny    backx        1126 Jan  3 21:03 fonts.dir

The configuration files that I ship also refer to a small script /tmp/printit which I've included. It stores the output of Xprt print commands in /tmp/print.$$.ps where $$ is the process id of the shell that runs /tmp/printit, so you get a different output file for each run. Also it invokes ghostview.

I start Xprt from my .xinitrc file as such :
(sleep 3; /home/danny/Hungry/X11r6.5.1/xc/programs/Xserver/Xprt :1 -fp /usr/lib/X11/xserver/C/print/models/EPSON.STYLUS.COLOR.400/fonts,tcp/localhost:7100 2>&1 >/dev/pts/0)&

I found both elements of the font path to be required, not sure why. This could be another bug which I've been unable to track.

Anyway as you can see one of the font path elements is the font server (xfs), which I enabled on my linux box especially for this. The font server has a standard configuration.

A final element (unless I forget something) is to set the environment variable XPSERVERLIST to :1 - that's your Xprt.