Chapter 12. PRINTING

The printing process on Unix works roughly as follows:

  1. An application generates a document to print.

  2. You or the application sends the document to a print server by means of a print client program.

  3. The print server puts the document on a queue.

  4. When it is the document's turn to print, the print server sends the document through a print filter program.

  5. The print filter changes the document to make it acceptable to a printer.

  6. If the printer does not understand PostScript (the standard document format in Unix), another print filter must rasterize the document into a bitmap form that the printer understands.

  7. The print server sends the result to the printer device.

Making your printer work on a Unix system can be a trying experience. There ...

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