Getting Started
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Chapter 5. Getting Started

This chapter of the TDEPrint Handbook will walk you through most of the configuration or selection options of TDEPrint. It will mainly deal with CUPS in this version, as the author is most familiar with it, and also because TDEPrint started off with supporting CUPS best. Later versions of the TDEPrint software and editions of this handbook will support and explore other printing systems more closely.

Selecting Your Print Subsystem

You need to define your print subsystem, before you are able to install any printer with the TDEPrint framework. There are two areas where you can define this: either in KControl (The Printing Manager section), or directly and “on the fly” from the print dialog.

Navigate to TDE Menu->Preferences->System->Printing Manager. At the bottom you can see a button that lets you select which printing subsystem you want to use. In TDE 2.2 you can choose from the following alternatives:

  • CUPS (Common Unix-like Printing System)

  • Print through an external program (generic)

  • LPR (Standard BSD Print System)

  • Generic Unix-like LPD print system (the default)

  • RLPR environment (print to remote LPD servers from the command line)

Of course, the chosen system must be installed, and up and running on your box prior to your selection, or before it takes effect.

On it's first startup, TDEPrint will try an autodetection. This only works for:

  • CUPS, as it is checking first for a running CUPS daemon

  • LPD, as it is checking for a running LPD daemon, plus a printcap file.

The system you choose must be installed on your system prior to your selection. The author's personal recommendation is CUPS.

Once autodetected, chosen, or changed, the active print subsystem will take effect for all TDE applications. Different users may have different print subsystems in use, if those do exist on the computer and are compliant with each other. Their settings are stored in the tdeprintrc. This file is unique to every user, and is normally installed in $HOME/.trinity/share/config/tdeprintrc.

Warning

This file is not intended to be directly editable, and all available options can be set from the TDEPrint GUI.

You may even select a different printer subsystem, on the fly, from the kprinter dialog box.

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