creating pdf files from lpd

[jim]

Rich,

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 04:06:11PM -0600, Rich Minear wrote:
> I have the need to try to create pdf files from a postscript printer stream.
> What I would like to do is:
>  
> 1.	Have a user send a print job to a lpr printer;
> 2.	Have lpd take the job, create a pdf file,
> 3.	Then take the file and mail it to the user.
>  
> This would all be automatic....can it be done?

You can define a new printer, say ps2pdf, that will do the above.  The user
invokes it "lpr -P ps2pdf file.ps".  In the /etc/printcap file you get to
specify a print filter, a script that will have the file to be printed on
its STDIN and the printer device on its STDOUT.  I think the user that
submitted the job is one of the parameters to the script with non-LPRng but
it looks like LPRng passes it in the environment as USER.  While in
/etc/printcap you can set the printer device to /dev/null since you won't
need a real printer.  A quick check found this man page:

   PS2PDF(1)               Ghostscript Tools               PS2PDF(1)

   NAME
          ps2pdf - Ghostscript PostScript to PDF translator

   SYNOPSIS
          ps2pdf [ options ] input.ps output.pdf

So the filter shouldn't be too difficult

  #/bin/bash
  #  Save the file.
  cat > /tmp/$$.ps

  #  Convert to PDF.
  ps2pdf /tmp/$$.ps /tmp/$$.pdf

  #  Mail the result.
  mail < /tmp/$$.pdf ${USER}

  #  Clean up.
  rm -f /tmp/$$.ps /tmp/$$.pdf

It will take some playing but it should work.
-- 
Jim