newbie help wanted with installing/using netpbm through macports

[Jochen Küpper]

On 20.01.2008, at 01:16, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> On Jan 19, 2008, at 14:11, Matt wrote:
>
>> Hooray!  I finally got my printer working!  Ryan, your help  
>> compiling ppmtomd was a big step.

Congratulations!

>> If anyone is curious, I typed up a complete list of the steps that  
>> I needed to take to get the printer working here:
>> http://forums.linux-foundation.org/read.php?19,4245,4315#msg-4315

Nice.

>> Hopefully anyone else trying do get an alps printer working on and  
>> intel mac will find it.
>>

> I'm glad you got it working! But your instructions have people  
> manually copying ppmtomd from ${prefix}/bin to /usr/local/bin.  
> That's non-excellent. It would be better to figure out how to make  
> it work from ${prefix}/bin.

Actually, I believe it is not necessary to do anything at all, well  
besides making sure /opt/local/bin is in the PATH when the PPD/filter  
is executed. he ppd does apparently not make any assumptions on the  
path, it simply calls the ppmtomd binary the environmnt gives it:
*FoomaticRIPOptionSetting PageSize=A4: " -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r600x600 - |  
&& ppmtomd -autoshift -papersize A4"
> You also have people manually downloading and installing  
> ghostscript, foomatic-rip and usbtb. We already have a port for  
> ghostscript in MacPorts. Wouldn't it make things easier to create  
> ports for foomatic-rip and usbtb as well?

Obviously;) Just someone has to do it -- and maybe a bit more than  
just these few packages would be useful.

It would be great if at some point MacPorts could provide a  
OpenPrinting port (or many...), providing the PPDs along the necessary  
driver/filter software? As a start, providing all the necessary driver  
software, but not the PPDs, would e a big step forward. The users  
download the PPD fro OpenPrinting.org and
    port install openprinting
gives them everything else that's necessary (could be a meta-package).

Just an idea...

Greetings,
Jochen
-- 
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         Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll


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