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A script to print to distiller folders in 10.2
Authored by: ssevenup on Mar 05, '03 11:21:36PM

A few additions...

I partially solved the permissions problem when I changed the permissions on the folders the watched folders were contained in.

The script was looking in the "watched folder/In" for the existing postscript files, but Distiller moves them into the "watched folder/Out". I tweaked the script to have it look there and it started appending the suffix as expected. PStill uses another scheme that I had to deal with also.

I modified the script to accomodate PStill, but since PStill allows any prefix to the preference file in the watched folder, some allowances had to be made. I could have used globbing to find them, but instead I just standardized the naming myself. This would be less than optimal for general consumption without detailed instructions.

I never figured out how to have both the PStill and Distiller watched folders available without combining the functions in the same shell script. That sounded like too much work to tackle today. I wasn't sure if the name of the shell script was important. In other words I never figured out if I could just have two different scripts in /usr/libexec/cups/backend, but it didn't appear that would work (i.e. the name appeared significant).

I don't have a public folder at my disposal, but if the original author or anyone else would like to see my shell scripts, I can email them. I welcome suggestions on more elegent to accomplish the same thing. I am still learning the art of shell scripting. Also, I would prefer a /bin/sh version of this (not that I actually tried just changing the !#)

I'm not sure how much more useful this is than PDF Services, but I like the idea of the option just appearing in the printer list. The geek quotient is higher ;-) I heard yesterday that OSX limits the "quality" of the output to 72dpi, and that only a few apps manage to force it any higher. Photoshop and Illustrator were mentioned. This makes me wonder just how useful all these cool PDF workflow tools are. This also explains why so many say that they get the best results with PDF if they use something like TexShop, which avoids the OSX print subsystem altogether.

mmoorcroft "at" mail.arc.nasa.gov

---
Mark Moorcroft
ELORET Corp. - NASA/Ames RC
Sys. Admin.



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