Printing in Wine
How to print documents in Wine...
Printing
Printing in Wine can be done in one of two ways:
Use the built-in Wine PostScript driver (+ ghostscript to produce
output for non-PostScript printers).
Use an external windows 3.1 printer driver (outdated, probably won't get supported any more).
Note that at the moment WinPrinters (cheap, dumb printers that require
the host computer to explicitly control the head) will not work with
their Windows printer drivers. It is unclear whether they ever will.
Built-in Wine PostScript driver
Enables printing of PostScript files via a driver built into Wine. See
below for installation instructions. The code for the PostScript
driver is in dlls/wineps/.
The driver behaves as if it were a DRV file called
wineps.drv which at the moment is built into
Wine.
Although it mimics a 16 bit driver, it will work with both 16 and 32
bit apps, just as win9x drivers do.
Spooling
Spooling is rather primitive. The [spooler] section of
the wine config file maps a port (e.g.
LPT1:) to a file or a command via a pipe. For
example the following lines
"LPT1:" = "foo.ps"
"LPT2:" = "|lpr"
map LPT1: to file foo.ps
and LPT2: to the lpr
command. If a job is sent to an unlisted port, then a file is created
with that port's name; e.g. for LPT3: a file
called LPT3: would be created.
There are now also virtual spool queues called
LPR:printername, which send the data
to lpr -Pprintername. You do not need to
specify those in the config file, they are handled automatically by
dlls/gdi/printdrv.c.
The Wine PostScript Driver
This allows Wine to generate PostScript files without
needing an external printer driver. Wine in this case uses the
system provided PostScript printer filters, which almost all use
ghostscript if necessary. Those should be configured during the
original system installation or by your system administrator.
Installation
Installation of CUPS printers
If you are using CUPS, you do not need to configure .ini or
registry entries, everything is autodetected.
Installation of LPR /etc/printcap based printers
If your system is not yet using CUPS, it probably uses LPRng
or a LPR based system with configuration based on /etc/printcap.
If it does, your printers in /etc/printcap
are scanned with a heuristic whether they are PostScript capable
printers and also configured mostly automatic.
Since Wine cannot find out what type of printer this is, you
need to specify a PPD file in the [ppd] section of
~/.wine/config. Either use the shortcut
name and make the entry look like:
[ppd]
"ps1" = "/usr/lib/wine/ps1.ppd"
Or you can specify a generic PPD file that is to match for all
of the remaining printers. A generic PPD file can be found in
documentation/samples/generic.ppd.
Installation of other printers
You do not need to do this if the above 2 sections apply, only if
you have a special printer.
Wine PostScript Driver=WINEPS,LPT1:
to the [devices] section and
Wine PostScript Driver=WINEPS,LPT1:,15,45
to the [PrinterPorts] section of win.ini,
and to set it as the default printer also add
device = Wine PostScript Driver,WINEPS,LPT1:
to the [windows] section of win.ini.
You also need to add certain entries to the registry.
The easiest way to do this is to customize the PostScript
driver contents of winedefault.reg (see below) and use the
Winelib program programs/regedit/regedit. For
example, if you have installed the Wine source tree in
/usr/src/wine, you could use the following
series of commands:
cp /usr/src/wine/winedefault.reg ~
vi ~/winedefault.reg
Edit the copy of winedefault.reg to suit your
PostScript printing requirements.
At a minimum, you must specify a PPD file for each printer.
regedit ~/winedefault.reg
Required configuration for all printer types
You won't need Adobe Font Metric (AFM) files for the (type 1 PostScript)
fonts that you wish to use any more.
Wine now has this information built-in.
You'll need a PPD file for your printer. This describes
certain characteristics of the printer such as which fonts are
installed, how to select manual feed etc. Adobe has many of
these on its website, have a look in
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/printerdrivers/win/all/.
See above for information on configuring the driver to use this
file.
To enable colour printing you need to have the
*ColorDevice entry in the PPD set to
true, otherwise the driver will generate
greyscale.
Note that you need not set printer=on in
the [wine] section of the wine config file, this
enables printing via external printer drivers and does not
affect the built-in PostScript driver.
If you're lucky you should now be able to produce PS files
from Wine!
I've tested it with win3.1 notepad/write, Winword6 and
Origin4.0 and 32 bit apps such as win98 wordpad, Winword97,
Powerpoint2000 with some degree of success - you should be
able to get something out, it may not be in the right place.
TODO / Bugs
Driver does read PPD files, but ignores all constraints
and doesn't let you specify whether you have optional
extras such as envelope feeders. You will therefore find
a larger than normal selection of input bins in the
print setup dialog box. I've only really tested ppd
parsing on the hp4m6_v1.ppd file.
No TrueType download.
StretchDIBits uses level 2 PostScript.
AdvancedSetup dialog box.
Many partially implemented functions.
ps.c is becoming messy.
Notepad often starts text too far to the left depending
on the margin settings. However the win3.1
pscript.drv (under wine) also does
this.
Probably many more...