Understand Printer and Fax Server Configuration

Understand your printer type before you set up the printer or fax server.

Regardless of the operating system, the printer destination can be any IPP server. The IPP server can be the printer itself, but if the printer doesn't natively support IPP, you can set up a print server that does support IPP (such as CUPS), and then connect to the print server to the printer.

To send a fax, you must set up Common Unix Printing Service (CUPS) and the fax4CUPS extension. For information on setting up CUPS or Windows IPP print servers and how to connect network printers to them, refer to the CUPS or Windows IPP software vendor documentation.

PDF is a popular output format for business reports. However, some reports require printing directly from the report server. For example, paychecks and invoices are usually printed as scheduled batch jobs. Some printers with PostScript Level 3 compliant Raster Image Processing can natively support PDF documents, but there're still many printers in business use that only support PostScript Level 2 that can't print PDF documents directly.

To print PDF documents directly, if your printer or print server doesn't support printing PDF:

• Select a filter - PDF to PostScript or PDF to PCL.

• Configure a custom, or third-party filter.

A filter enables you to call a conversion utility to convert the PDF to a file format supported by your specific printer type. You can use the PDF to PCL conversion only for font selection requirements for check printing. For generic printing requirements, use the PDF to PostScript level 2 filter.

Selection of PDF to PCL filter automatically populates the Filter Command field. You can embed PCL commands into RTF templates to invoke the PCL commands at a specific position on the PCL page; for example, to use a font installed on the printer for routing and account numbers on a check.

You can also call a custom filter using operating system commands.

To specify a custom filter, pass the native OS command string with the two placeholders for the input and output filename, {infile} and {outfile}.

This is useful especially if you're trying to call IPP printers directly or IPP printers on Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS). Unlike CUPS, those print servers don't translate the print file to a format the printer can understand. With the filter functionality, you can call any of the native OS commands to transform the document to the format that the target printer can understand.

For example, to transform a PDF document to a PostScript format, enter the following PDF to PS command in the Filter Command field:

pdftops {infile} {outfile}

To call an HP LaserJet printer setup on a Microsoft IIS from Linux, you can set Ghostscript as a filter to transform the PDF document into the format that the HP LaserJet can understand. To do this, enter the following Ghostscript command in the Filter Command field:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=laserjet -sOutputFile={outfile} {infile}

For fax servers, you can use the filter to transform the file to Tag Image File Format (TIFF).