kcmprinter - a tool for configuring printers

kcmprinter 0.3, 6 May 1998

Main Window

The main window of kcmprinter contains a list of the printers installed on the system, and four buttons offering administrative functions. If logged in as a normal user, kcmprinter can only be used to inspect the list of available printers -- pressing any of the administrative buttons will result in an error message. If logged in as root, pressing a button will produce a dialog allowing administrative functions to be carried out.

Note that all the dialogs make their changes immediately upon pressing the dialog "OK" button. The "Apply" button at the bottom of the main window has no effect, and the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons serve only to dismiss kcmprinter.

The four administrative functions are as follows:

Add Local Printer

The Add Local Printer Dialog presents a number of items of information, almost all of which will be filled in with suitable default values.
  1. The printer name, which will generally be of the form "lp" followed by one or two digits. If this is the first printer to be added, the name will also contain the alternate "lp", which will be the default printer.
  2. The spool directory name, which will be of the form /var/spool/lpd/<printername>. If the printer name is edited, the spool directory will change to match.
  3. The device name, which may be chosen from the list of devices detected by kcmprinter, or manually edited.
  4. The printer type, which determines the type of filtering used when printing.
  5. A small note box, allowing you to add other information, such as where the printer is located.
At any point, the "Cancel" button may be pressed to dismiss the dialog. When you're happy with the printer details (remembering to select a printer type -- this is not done by default), press "OK" to commit the changes.

Add Remote Printer

The Add Remote Printer Dialog is very similar to the Add Local Printer Dialog.  However, in place of the list of printer types there are two boxes for entering the name of the remote host and the queue on that host.  As there are no sensible defaults for these, the boxes will be empty, and must be filled in before pressing the "OK" button.  Note that the assumption is that no filtering will be carried out when printing to a remote printer.
 

Edit Selected Printer

If a printer is selected from the list (using the left mouse button), its details may be edited. A dialog similar to the Add Local Printer or Add Remote Printer dialogs will appear (depending on the location of the printer) and the details may be changed.

Remove Selected Printer

If a printer is selected from the list (again, using the left mouse button), it may be deleted. kcmprinter will delete the entry from the printcap file
and, optionally, remove the associated spooling directory.

kcmprinter is written by Neil Hart with contributions by others.
kcmprinter is released under the GPL.
View the changes since version 0.1 here.
View other notes about kcmprinter here.