Printing problems with NT Workstation clients

[Jean Francois Micouleau]

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Stephan Greene wrote:

> > totally transparent to users and administrators. Samba forces the NT
> > client to send RAW data whatever the printer driver is.
> 
> Now I'm confused (OK, more confused, at least until I learn the
> terminology better).

I see, I'm confusing you. A bit of terminology:

RAW and EMF: When you print from an NT machine (Joe's computer) to a print
queue managed by another NT machine (Accounting print server) which in
turn send data to a printer (networked or directly connected to the server
it doesn't matter), the printed datas on the wire can be in 2 formats.

The RAW format: the datas sent by the NT client is in the printer native
language. For exemple the NT4 postscript driver does that, the client
generates itself the postscript code with the printer specific functions
embedded. The Printer server just acts as a spooler and a forwarder to the
final physical printer.

The EMF format: the datas sent are in a pseudo-high-level description
language. This EMF file is converted to the printer native language by the
print server before sending it to the printer. Example: All the PCL
printers. So half work is done on the client, the other half on the
server. Samba can't do that, and to my knowledge there is no EMF
interpreter available on Unix.

A nice point is you can force ALL the printer drivers to send RAW datas to
a print server

What I think you are confusing is where the NT spooling is done and where
the queues are located. I can give some explanations if someone ask.

> Great.  I must have skipped over the message on that one.  Thank you.
> Also, thank you for working on samba development (I recall this code in
> particular is your work).

thanks. I haven't sent any message to -ntdom saying the code is available
because until last monday some features were missing and it's still not
production quality. As soon as I think it is, I will post an howto.

> These people DO NOT want to do it that way.  Their current procedure is as
> I described originally - the selected printer automagically appears.
> Minimizing user and adminsitrator overhead is one of their big goals.

ok I understand, the printer automagically appears in the head branch now.


	Jean Francois