Handle requests for a printer's resources
You must be root to start spooler. |
spooler -d device [options]
Neutrino
The spooler allows multiple users to share the resources of a single printer. If you have more than one printer, you can start an instance of spooler for each one.
The spooler is usually started by an enumerator, such as enum-par (see enum-devices), as follows:
spooler -d /dev/par1
or you can start spooler (e.g. for a network printer) in your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file — see Controlling How Neutrino Starts in the Neutrino User's Guide.
When you start spooler, it queries the printer to determine its type. If you provide a PnP string, spooler doesn't query the printer for it:
spooler -d /dev/par1 -P PnPstring
You can use other options to force spooler to use a configuration file and assign a name to the printer, but this isn't recommended:
spooler -c pcl -n My_PCL_Printer -d /dev/par1 &
You can find configuration files for commonly used printers in /etc/printers. These files specify the possible and default settings for the printers, as well as filters for converting output to a form that the printers understand.
Photon applications use spooler for printing. The filters that convert Photon draw-stream (.phs) output are named phs-to-*.
For a graphical interface to spooler, see prjobs.
enum-devices, phs-to-*, prjobs
Controlling How Neutrino Starts and Printing chapters of the Neutrino User's Guide