Auto is missing in kprinter; still a problem

[Goffioul Michael]

> This is still a problem. Maybe I should give more information.
> 
> We have about 15 printers. These printers have different papersizes
> in their trays. I cannot advertise to all our potential users where
> in each of these printers there is eg. DIN-A3 paper.
> 
> As these printers all are aware, what sizes are in their respective
> trays, it sufficient to put a "PageSize" statement into a printer file
> and to ask not for a distinct input tray. The printer then selects the
> right tray and prints the file. This is, as far as I can see, in
> accordance with the explanations given in "PostScript Printer 
> Description
> File Format Specification", by Adobe.
> 
> kprinter in its older versions supported this by offering an 
> additional
> virtual tray named "Auto". When the "Auto" tray was selected 
> there was no
> command for a particular input tray and there was a PageSize statement
> in the postscript file.
> 
> When kprinter offers no "Auto" tray, as it does now, the user 
> must select
> one of the real trays. If he needs a certain paper size and 
> it is not in
> that tray the print job stalls and blocks the whole queue. To 
> make matters
> worse, I cannot tell the printer to take the paper for this 
> job from another
> tray. That job needs to be canceled and repeated. That's not funny.
> 
> I tried to solve that problem by putting an additonal tray, called
> "auto", into the ppd-file. This does not work either, because kprinter
> obviously thinks under these circumstances, that it must not put
> a "PageSize" statement into the postscript file and puts a 
> "PageRegion"
> statement there instead. "PageRegion" tells the printer not to look
> for the right tray holding the right paper size. The printer takes the
> first non-empty tray. So we are back to stalling, blocking, canceling
> and repeating.

kprinter by itself do not process the PS data, so it is not putting
those PageSize or PageRegion statement in the print data. It just
take the PS generated by the app and send it to CUPS with the selected
option set. What could be interesting is to know what print options are
sent by kprinter (if debug is enabled you can see them in a terminal)
and maybe also the PS file (the easiest is to schedule the printing to
"Never" and look for the print file in the CUPS spool directory).

Looking at the CUPS code, it looks like CUPS is just appending a choice
"Auto" to the option "InputSlot" with no PS code associated. Having the
same in the PPD file should have the same impact.

Michael.