From: "Doug Bissett" <virtualized_ecs_users@2rosenthals.com>
Message-ID: <000.70bd0e004287f84b.015@telus.net>
To: "Virtualized eCS Users Mailing List" <virtualized_ecs_users@2rosenthals.com>
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 19:39:14 -0600 (MDT)
In-Reply-To: <list-2432117@2rosenthals.com>
References: <list-2432117@2rosenthals.com>
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Subject: Re: [Virtualized eCS] Printer support

On 2010-05-23, at 08:10:38, Ed Durrant wrote:
>
>I've been trying to get a sort of Wintendo print server in virtualbox 
>working for sometime - it would of course only work over network 
>connectivity - I take it you are "riding" on the eCS Wifi support to get 
>to the wifi enabled printer. 

No, I am using the  Virtual Switch to access the router, which uses the
WiFi to access the printer. I suppose it would also work if I used the
eCS WiFi to access the router (not sure how, or if, the printer could
be made to work using the eCS WiFi, without the router). As far as the
guest XP system is concerned, it just sees the printer on the network,
and has no idea that it is running in a virtual machine. The host
machine knows nothing about it, except the part that causes the data to
be transferred  to/from the router.

>I have never found a way to have the data 
>"captured" by a Win32 program and auto sent to the printer without 
>hitting the printer driver problem however - I need something to convert 
>incoming standard (i.e. PS or PCL) data into native printer language 
>within the Wintendo Virtual session. Haven't found anything that works 
>so far. If I could do this I could load a stripped down (and locked 
>down) Windoze image in Virtualbox (or VPC/2) and have it running to take 
>care of printing to any Windoze compatible networked printer.

I think the WiFi setup would work with any windows machine sharing the
printer, but for eCS (or Linux etc.) to use the printer, they would
need a compatible printer driver so they could use the shared printer.
The trick seems to be that the windows in the virtual machine sees the
printer as network connected, and it is not dependent on anything else.
At least the guest windows can use the printer as if it was a real
windows using a network connected printer (and scanner).

Your problem would seem to be that you want to capture the data, then
convert it to something that the windows driver can send to the
machine. The only thing, that I can think of, would be to print to a
PDF file, in eCS (or Linux etc.), and send that to windows. Then, you
would need to, somehow, get the windows PDF support to print it
(possibly as simple as opening the PDF file in Acrobat Reader, then
printing it). I am not sure, but I think that GhostScript has a windows
version that might do that, with a little help from a script of some
sort.

>By the way I guess you know the latest versions of CUPS/2 work via USB 
>as well as parallel and network?

I never tried parallel, but I have got USB to work, up to a point. My
brother has the Canon Pixima MP620, and a Canon i960. I also have an
i960, but never got it to work  with CUPS (haven't tried for over a
year). I did get my brother's i960 to work, but there is something odd
about the colors. I can get the MP620 to work with CUPS too, but it
puts a line of blank dots, between each line of dots, causing only the
top half of the page to be printed on a whole page. CUPS is still not
usable with either machine, but it is close. When (if) CUPS ever
supports these machines properly, it should be possible to use a shared
printer to do the printing, but I think it should also be possible to
use CUPS to print directly to the network attached printer (not sure
how though, I didn't have the time to try to figure that out). The
really interesting part is that the scanner also works with the windows
guest.
-- 
****************************
From the eComStation of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus.net
****************************
... Your reality check just bounced.