simpleprint-1.0 INTRODUCTION

This program is based on the priciple of parsimony, as dictated by William
of Ockham in the 14th century:

	"Plurality should not be posited unnecessarily".

Less is more. Get rid of the buggy bulk of the traditional unix printer
spool, or its rival cousin, CUPS.

Welcome to an elegant solution for the simple desktop user: a single, simple
queue, and a print job injector. It works by acting as a fairly primitive
yet elegant front-end shell script process to the ghostscript interpreter,
which is the heart of any unix printing solution.


HOW TO SET UP AND USE: 

run the "install.sh" script as root. it will set up simpleprint in
/usr/local, and prompt you to make a backup of your old "lpr". Next, a link
is created from "lpr" old names (for backwards compatability, and
application operability) to the "spinject" script. "/usr/bin/spd" will link
to "/usr/local/simpleprint/spd", which is a bash script which waits for
print jobs. It looks for them in /tmp/print<number>, where <number> is a
randomly assigned job number.

Edit the variables at the top of the file "spd" to reflect your setup
defaults. More info is in the script file itself about consulting
ghostscript documentation about your printer description, etc. If you want
to change these variables later on, edit the file again. For some, this may
seem painful, I just know I tend to NEVER change them, so, to each his own.

Start the daemon by typing:

	spd &

(the "&" is neccesary, because you want it to be a background process.)

to stop (remove) all print jobs:

	sprmv

to COMPLETELY stop the daemon:

	spdkill

And finally, to print a postscript job

	lpr <filename>
or just;
	lpr
if you are pipng from some program which produces postscript output.

LIMITATIONS:

Currently, lpr takes no arguments other than filenames. Most applications
(ex. Abiword) automatically handle the number of copies, etc., when piping
to lpr.

lpr prints postscript jobs, thats it. No filters. Convert jobs with a script
yourself. Use "enscript" for plain text.

Enjoy!
Aaron K. Johnson
