Baslinux mailing list

["Peter Expolio" <info.wetware AT lycos.com>]

>> if you modify printcap, you need to kill and restart the 
>> daemon in order for the modifications to be interpreted:
>> 
>> ps | grep lpd
>> kill [pid]
>
>Or you can simply do:
>----------------
>kill `pidof lpd`
>----------------

Hmmmm, didn't know that. It's great, it saves me an operation or two (ps, 
grep, look up pid, eeeetc.). Thanks!

>> lpd is in one of my rc.d files
>
>I don't start lpd until I actually want to print.  
>Then I run the following script:
>------------------------------
>for i in parport parport_pc lp
>  do insmod $i
>done
>lpd
>------------------------------
>It installs the necessary modules and starts lpd.  

A bit like the "load printer modules" in the wp script, except for the 
daemon. I suppose you've named that and execute it as a standalone from an 
xterm. I'm actually considering loading up the modules at boot-up and leaving 
the daemon for later. But I'll have to get it to work properly first!

>> to find out whether to use lp0 or lp1 or lp?, try lsmod, that'll 
>> give you a list of the loaded modules and what they're using). 
>
>Unfortunately lsmod doesn't indicate precisely which lp interface 
>is used.  You can get that by doing the following:
>---------------
>dmesg | grep lp
>---------------
>
>>  filter < filename.ps > /dev/lp0
>
>That's a very useful tip.  Thank you for suggesting it.

Hm. It was in a Spanish Printing-Filter-"COMO" (HOWTO). They suggested once 
you've typed in your filter scripts and made them executable, you try them 
out as standalones this way, just to reduce some future troubleshooting 
headache. So I reckoned I could just use the ps filter to pipe out ps output, 
until I sussed out the lpr mess.

>> export to .doc with Abiword or to .rtf with Ted (although 
>> Abiword does that quite well, too).
>
>My wife uses Word at work and has been preparing some documents
>here on BL2.  For a while, she was using Ted (.rtf) and is now
>using AbiWord.  The Ted .rtf files did not always display correctly
>in Word -- minor reformatting was sometimes required.  However,
>the AbiWord documents (both .rtf and .doc) always display perfectly 
>in Word.
>
>I strongly recommend AbiWord (it even works on BL1).

Well, Ted is just a _little_ bit faster, but everything in AbiWord (the XML 
native format, all the cross-format capability, aside from the visual aspect, 
spellchecking, formatting, etc.) is just well worth waiting a couple more 
seconds at boot-time. I've tried Flwriter and Ted, but I think they are about 
to be uninstalled sometimes soon. If I need a full-blown w-processor with 
MS-Word compatibility (not my cup of tea in any case) it'll have to be 
AbiWord. 

On the other hand, I  remain committed to the fast, power editors (vi, vim, 
elvis, emacs, joe, pico, whatever) as a main work-tool. But when you need to 
export to a certain proprietory and ubicutious file format, AbiWord is one of 
the best sollutions I've seen. Unless someone comes up with an anti-antiword 
which can simply convert ASCII to .doc. 

Btw, has anyone worked out if AbiWord can liaise with ispell? Or, at least, 
if it can be instructed to read it's hash dictionaries?



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