'WAY Cool PDF Writer

'WAY cool. Just like the old free Adobe PDF writer of 1998 vintage. It lets you simply print directly to a PDF instead of first to a PS and then translating it with ps2pdf.

The details are at
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17636.html

The article is a little confusing, it talks about both the lpadmin command line approach and the CUPS GUI. ITOT you do all the work at the command line and then check it with the GUI.

So, to install this, all from the command line as root:

• Install CUPS with the normal software installer (duh)...
• Create a script file /usr/lib/cups/backend/pdf-writer per the provided text or our own now installed version, doing a chmod 755 in the process.
• Unzip the designated Postscript Printer Description (PPD::

 cd /usr/share/cups/model
 gunzip -d Postscript-level2.ppd.gz

* Download the free AdobeTM Distiller ppd file here:
 http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=204&fileID=204
* Unzip it and copy it to the target directory:
  unzip -d adobe.zip
  cp Adobe/ADIST5.PPD /usr/share/cups/model/Acrobat-Distiller.ppd

• Add the printer with:

  mkdir -p /export/share/pdf
  chmod -R 777 /export
  lpadmin -p CUPS-PDF -v pdf-writer:/export/share/pdf/ -E -P \
/usr/share/cups/model/Postscript-level2.ppd -D "PDF Writer for CUPS" \ -L "PDF Backend /usr/lib/backend/pdf-writer"

  lpadmin -p CUPS-PDF -v pdf-writer:/export/share/pdf/ -E -P \
/usr/share/cups/model/Acrobat-Distiller.ppd -D "PDF Writer for CUPS" \ -L "PDF Backend /usr/lib/backend/pdf-writer"

• Then and only then, launch the 'way cool CUPS GUI:

http://localhost:631/admin

and play with your new virtual printer.

:-)

• When you print test pages from this interface the results are stored in /export/share/pdf

Very very good.