[plug] using CUPS & netatalk to do mac printer spooling

[Craig Ringer]

This problem does not appear to be CUPS after all. If it is, then it's a 
  darn weird problem. GhostScript is happy with the jobs I captured 
after they'd been through CUPS .... and it turns out that so is Adobe 
Acrobat Distiller. If Distiller will process the PostScript, then it's 
very likely to be OK - especially if gs, with it's entirely different PS 
engine, is also happy.

So... I have two printers that spew gibberish when sent these files, but 
both Acrobat Distiller and GhostScript think the files are fine. I've 
tested sending them using JetDirect to both printers
(`nc < $PSFILE $PRINTER_HOSTNAME 9100`) and using the browser-based 
print interface on the Xerox - same problem.

All the problem files contain binary data, despite print settings on the 
macs to send ASCII. It seems to be mostly fonts (even when font 
embedding is off and there is no text in the document - *sigh*) but 
Quark sends EPSes exactly as-is, binary or ASCII, as well. On the other 
hand, they're processed fine by two different PS interpreters so I don't 
see how it could be binary corruption issues. I did have one job that 
looked like it might suggest binary corruption, but I can't seem to 
reproduce that problem and all the others convert to PDF fine.

This remains a really weird issue, but I'm not at all sure that CUPS is 
the problem. I'll let you all know if I find out what was going on - in 
part so that if anybody else runs into this later, they find the 
archives.  I don't know about you folk, but I get what I'd consider a 
surprising amount of mail from people about posts archived on cantech 
from the plug archives. It seems google is still keeping busy.

I'm now wondering things about line-ending differences... perhaps gs and 
distiller are smart enough to account for them, but the printer RIPs 
aren't? It seems a bit odd - especially since the big Xerox we have here 
has an Adobe PS3 RIP in it.

Craig Ringer


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