From: "Marek Chlopek" <mchlopek@post.pl>
On Wednesday, 13 September 2006 13:12, William Gallafent wrote:
Therefore, how about (as an alternative route) installing a generic PostScript printer driver on the Windows side (haven't used Crossover so don't know how this would be done there), printing to PostScript from Word / Excel, then using the already-mentioned ps2pdf tool to make the PDF. If OO can't import the MS documents well enough, then perhaps ps2pdf will do a good enough job on the PostScript.
thanks all.
this above advise seems to be worth to examine. i personally prefer to use OOo but business documents can not be imported into OOo without mistakes.
See my previous post for a working setup of printing from windows directly to pdf via samba. The .pdf files are created in the users home directory on the linux box. http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/SuSE/2005-08/2043.html Here is the entire post: Mates, I apologize to the cannibalizing distributions, but in having problems with pdf-gen or, as otherwise known, print-pdf, I thought I would share a little on just how easy it actually is to get working on any system. The cannibalizing involved taking the mdk print-pdf script and dumping it into SuSE -- nothing less than blasphemy. Anyway it works. BACKGROUND I had pdf-gen working on mdk 2005LE as a new box to replace the 7.2 box at work. After transition, pdf-gen was reporting "out of memory" errors on XP clients. Made no sense, since (no pun intended) it was working fine on the new box before adding additional shares. So I dug into print-pdf to try and get it working. TEST -SETTING IT UP ON SUSE To troubleshoot, I thought I would start from scratch and try and get it working on my SuSE 9.0 server at home which had no such capability. I figured I could learn how it worked in the process and then fix the 2005LE box at work. The basic process was: (1) to copy the mdk print-pdf script to the SuSE box. That is the: [david@bonza scripts]$ ll /usr/share/samba/scripts/ total 12 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3555 Apr 4 09:03 print-pdf* (note file permissions) The actual script is: ****************************** #!/bin/bash # samba-print-pdf # This is a script which allows you to set up a virtual printer on samba # which will take the file (generated by a postscript filter on windows) # and turn it into a PDF, informing the user of where it is when it # is done # # (c) Buchan Milne <bgmilne@cae.co.za> 2002 # License: GPLv2 # Changelog # v0.0.6 20030428 # - Allow options passed as env. variables from print command # - Inline and simplify sed (use tr) clean script # - Ensure file arrives in PREFIX even if TEMP is used without provided name # - Changes from Joshua M. Schmidlkofer <joshua@imr-net.com> 20030425 # - Debugging, adjustments, and corrections. # - Stupid sed sanitizing script. [probably horribly inefficient also]. # - Temp file usage cleanup. # v0.0.5 20020723 # - Add support for preset settings # - Allow passing of filename provided by client as final filename # # Arguments: # $1 = file (usually passed with %s from samba) # $2 = unix prefix to where to place the file (~%u should work) # $3 = windows prefix to the same location (//%L/%u should work) # $4 = user/computer to send a notification to (%u or %m) # $5 = IP address of client (%I) # $6 = Name of destination file without extension (%J) # $7 = PDF setting (prepress,print,screen etc) # # If you want to customise any of the following configuration defaults, # you can place them in the file /etc/samba/print-pdf.conf. # If you need to modify anything in this script, please provide me with your # changes, preferably in such a way that the changes are configurable. PS2PDF=ps2pdf13 OPTIONS="-dAutoFilterColorImages=false -sColorImageFilter=FlateEncode" #Values taken from arguments: INPUT=$1 PREFIX="$2" WINBASE=$(echo "$3"|sed -e 's,/,\\\\,g') #NAME=`echo "$6"|sed -e 's/[&/:{}\\\[<>$#@*^!?=|]/-/g;s/\]/-/g'` NAME=`echo "$6"|tr '[:punct:]' '[-*]'` # Source config file if it exists: CONFFILE=/etc/samba/print-pdf.conf [ -e $CONFFILE ] && . $CONFFILE #Values not taken as arguments, could be set via env. vars (?) or config file KEEP_PS=${KEEP_PS=0} PERMS=${PERMS=640} BASEFILE=${BASEFILE=pdf-service} TEMP="${TEMP=$2}" UMASK=${UMASK=006} #Make sure that destination directory exists mkdir -p "$PREFIX" INFILE=$(basename $INPUT) umask $UMASK [ -n "$NAME" ] && TEMP="$PREFIX" #make a temp file to use for the output of the PDF OUTPUT=`mktemp -q $TEMP/$BASEFILE-XXXXXX` if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "$0: Can't create temp file $TEMP/$OUTPUT, exiting..." exit 1 fi if [ -n "$NAME" ]; then FINALOUTPUT="$PREFIX/$NAME" else FINALOUTPUT="$OUTPUT" fi if [ -n "$7" ]; then OPTIONS="$OPTIONS -dPDFSETTINGS=/${7#pdf-}" else OPTIONS="$OPTIONS -dPDFSETTINGS=/default" fi WIN_OUTPUT="$WINBASE\\"`basename "$FINALOUTPUT"` #mv "$INPUT" "$INPUT.ps";INPUT="$INPUT.ps" # create the pdf $PS2PDF $OPTIONS "$INPUT" "$OUTPUT.pdf" >/dev/null 2>&1 mv -f "${OUTPUT}.pdf" "${FINALOUTPUT}".pdf # Generate a message to send to the user, and deal with the original file: MESSAGE=$(echo "Your PDF file has been created as $WIN_OUTPUT.pdf\n") # Cleanup if [ $KEEP_PS != 0 ];then mv -f $INPUT "${FINALOUTPUT}".ps MESSAGE=$(echo "$MESSAGE and your postscript file as $WIN_OUTPUT.ps") # Fix permissions on the generated files chmod $PERMS "${FINALOUTPUT}".ps "${FINALOUTPUT}".pdf else rm -f $INPUT # Fix permissions on the generated files chmod $PERMS "${FINALOUTPUT}".pdf fi #Remove empty file from mktemp: rm -f $OUTPUT # Send notification to user echo -e $MESSAGE|smbclient -M $4 -I $5 -U "PDF Generator" >/dev/null 2>&1 ****************************** literally .... copy and paste it into ... /usr/share/samba/scripts/print-pdf on whatever box you are using The permissions are: [david@bonza scripts]$ ls -al /usr/share/samba/scripts/ total 20 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 16 10:24 ./ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 4 09:03 ../ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3555 Apr 4 09:03 print-pdf* -rwxr-x--- 1 root adm 5757 Apr 4 09:03 smb-migrate* (2) Confirm you have ps2pdf13 installed or edit the script to work with what you do have. You will at least have one of the following if you have ghostscript installed: skyline:/home/david # ls /usr/bin/ps2* /usr/bin/ps2ascii /usr/bin/ps2frag /usr/bin/ps2pdf12 /usr/bin/ps2pdf14 /usr/bin/ps2pk /usr/bin/ps2epsi /usr/bin/ps2pdf /usr/bin/ps2pdf13 /usr/bin/ps2pdfwr /usr/bin/ps2ps (3) Then, just edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the following share: [pdf-gen] path = /var/tmp guest ok = No printable = Yes comment = PDF Generator (only valid users) printing = bsd printcap name = cups #print command = /usr/share/samba/scripts/print-pdf file path win_path recipient IP & print command = /usr/share/samba/scripts/print-pdf "%s" "%H" "//%L/%u" "%m" "%I" "%J" & lpq command = /bin/true (4) Then (run testparm -- always; and (5) restart Samba): testparm will complain about a global print definition inside a share, but that can be ignored. On SuSE (as root): rcsmb restart On mdk (as root): /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart (6) Then from M$ clients, browse to the pdf-gen share and double-click it or control panel - printers - add printer - network and select it. Choose OK to 'manually select' the driver. Choose one of the latest HP Laserjet postscript (PS) drivers; (eg. Laserjet 8150 color PS, or Laserjet 6P/6.. PS, or Laserjet 5, etc.. That's it, that's all it takes! Open Word, (choose your most used app), select pdf-gen as your printer and BINGO your pdf is created in the users home directory -- no questions asked. Damn slick! (but it still hasn't solved my original problem, but -- learning has occurred) But FWIIW, I thought I would post it. YMMV. But from simply having to dump a mdk script onto suse, confirm that ps2pdf13 was there, set the permissions, add a share to smb.conf, add a printer to the weak clients and presto -- your done, your printing to pdf from anywhere. Anyway, I thought it was cool. -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. RANKIN LAW FIRM, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 (936) 715-9333 (936) 715-9339 fax www.rankinlawfirm.com --