Hello, mainly for further information: On Jun 25 19:19 1xx wrote (excerpt):
2014-06-24 17:53 GMT+09:00 Johannes Meixner
: What should "a virtual printer" actually mean for the user? What final user's goal is solved by "a virtual printer"?
I think that there are the users whom they want to output for data except the papers by a procedure same as print.
Of course experienced users can (mis?)-use the printing system to convert any input data format into any output data format and additionally to deliver the output data to any destination (provided there exist programs that actually implement the data conversion and delivery) because the printing system can be arbitrarily enhanced with any filters and backends, see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_Your_Own_Filters_to_Print_with_CUPS and http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_Your_Own_Backends_to_Print_with_CUPS This way an experienced user could have print queues for his usual mail receivers and "just print" instead of manually sending mails optionally with conversion of the original data into plain text or he could have a print queue to upload content onto a server with conversion of e.g. plain text input into the server's specific data format (e.g. HTML) or whatever else he may like. Accordingly there can be various enhancement packages for the printing system that implement various kind of such special use cases. I think such special use cases are no misuse of the printing system so that there is nothing wrong with such special enhancement packages but I think such special enhancement packages are neither needed nor really helpful in the "officially blessed" set of openSUSE packages. Another possible workaround how to make a PDF: Since the general move from PostScript to PDF as standard print job data format (see http://en.opensuse.org/Concepts_printing) all applications that can print should be able to produce PDF. When applications produce PDF as print job data but provide no "Export/Save as PDF" functionality, as workaround one may have any print queue where printing is disabled so that the application's PDF print job data is kept as print job data file /var/spool/cups/d<job-number>-<file-number> but by default only root and lp can access it - just a litte selfmande backend as workaround on top of the workaround... Note that even when applications produce PDF as print job data, there is still a distinction between "Print" and "Export/Save as PDF", see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Landscape_Printing#Again_there_is_a_subtle_distin... Kind Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH -- Maxfeldstrasse 5 -- 90409 Nuernberg -- Germany HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendoerffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org