Foomatic Data for the HPIJS Printer Drivers
===========================================

foomatic-db-hpijs
-----------------

Release 1.3.1-1, for HPIJS 1.3.1

Foomatic data for the HP's HPIJS (http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net)
printer drivers, to be added to the Foomatic database (package
foomatic-db). Supports also the patched 1.3.1 and 1.2.2 versions from
http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printing/hpijs/.


Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmx.net>

http://www.linuxprinting.org/

This usage documentation file is written by Till Kamppeter


Intro
-----

Foomatic is a database providing information about the usage of
printers with free operating systems and free printer drivers, where
"free" is meant as free software in the sense of the Free Software
Foundation (http://www.gnu.org). Therefore the database only contains
information about printer drivers which are free software. The
technology of this database can also be used for non-free drivers, but
the database entries have to be published in separate packages
then. The database can also be run under non-free operating systems
(as commercial Unixes) as they often use GhostScript and free printer
drivers.

Since most free operating systems (GNU/Linux, *BSD, ...) are
compatible to Unix, their applications send PostScript to the printer
queues. Therefore one usually hands over the PostScript directly to a
PostScript printer (sometimes with some prepended PostScript commands
for options) or uses GhostScript for generating the data format the
printer needs. This is done by the printer spooler which also stores
the data in a spool directory when the printer is still occupied by
another job, transmits the data to a print server in the network, and
so on.

The printer drivers for non-PostScript printers are either compiled
into GhostScript, a plug-in for GhostScript (e. g. IJS drivers), or
they are an extra filter which converts a generic bitmap generated by
GhostScript into the printer's data format. For this the spooler has
to call complicated command lines of GhostScript and the extra filter
(if needed). The user of a free operating system normally does not see
these command lines because an installation program takes appropriate
filter scripts and/or description files from a database and assigns
them to the printer queue.

Widely used databases were the RHS-Printfilters and the APS
filters. Their disadvantages were that they only supported one spooler
(LPD/LPRng) and only a small part of the driver's options (mostly page
size and resolution). Foomatic supports all options of the drivers and
all known spoolers (LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, CUPS, PPR, PDQ, CPS, direct
spooler-less printing). In addition, all known free software printer
drivers are supported. Foomatic also supports printing of various
non-PostScript file types for spoolers which do not support this by
themselves (LPD, LPRng, GNUlpr, spooler-less printing). To enable this
feature you need to have "a2ps", "enscript", or "mpage" installed.

Another problem is that the way how to install queues, to print files,
and to handle jobs is very different with different spoolers. LPD for
example requires editing of configuration files for adding a queue,
whereas CUPS and PPR have specialized command line utilities. Foomatic
puts a layer between the applications and the spoolers so that one has
a common, spooler-independent command line interface for all spoolers,
so that switching of spoolers or administration of a network with
different spoolers gets much easier, because for the same operations
there are the same commands, independent of the spooler.

This command line interface can also be used as a base for
spooler-independent graphical frontends.


Installation
------------

Foomatic runs on all systems where one can run the Perl
interpreter.

This package itself requires only a Perl interpreter and the Foomatic
database, foomatic-db.

Install it after you have installed fommatic-db using the commands (if
you have downloaded this package from CVS, run "./make_configure" at
first, for that you will also need the "autoconf" and "aclocal"
utilities, "aclocal" is in the "automake" package in some
distributions):

   ./configure
   make
   make install

"make install" must be run as "root", "./configure" and "make" can be
run as a normal user.

The "configure" script will auto-detect the place where your Foomatic
database is located and generate the Makefile, which is used to build
and install the Foomatic data. If "configure" fails because of
something not being installed, do

   rm -rf config.cache autom*.cache

before you run "configure" again (after installing the missing parts).

By default, ths package is installed into subdirectories of /usr/local
(e. g. /usr/local/share/foomatic), to get it into subdirectories of
/usr (/usr/share/foomatic), enter:

   ./configure --prefix=/usr
   make install

There are other things which can be adjusted by options on the
"configure" command line, enter "./configure --help" for more
info. You can also modify variables in the beginning of the "Makefile"
after running "configure", but note that every run of "configure"
re-creates the "Makefile".

If "configure" did no auto-detect where you have placed the database
(or if you intend to install the database afterwards), do

   export LIBDIR=/path/to/the/database
   ./configure
   make
   make install
   
You have specified the path correctly, when

   /path/to/the/database/db/source/driver/ljet4.xml

exists.

You can also run Foomatic out of the source directory of
foomatic-db-engine (for example when you want to try it out, or when
you don't have root access, see USAGE of foomatic-db-engine).
Therefore enter (can be done as a normal user):

   ./configure
   make inplace

Then the Foomatic data for HPIJS is not inserted into the system-wide
database, but into the local one. For that both the tarball of this
package and of the foomatic-db package must be put into the same
directory. After unpacking both and doing the command shown above, the
data will go into the right place. "make clean" will remove the data.