FW: Comment posted to PDF backend for CUPS

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Monday 29 January 2007 09:10, michael.goffioul at swing.be wrote:
> ---------------------------------------
> De: webmaster at easysw.com
> Sujet: Comment posted to PDF backend for CUPS
> Date: Lundi 29 Janvier 03:37
> 
> 
> angolmo posted the following comment:
> 
> I was wondering whether the output directory could be set 
> \"on the fly\"making it nice with kdialog. The point is to 
> \"satisfy\" the users in mycompany, that want the result 
> document to be stored with a name of theirwish. I've been 
> trying to do it myself but apparently the script doesn't
> launch any interactive programs; and I had no results by 
> googling (all thescripts alike form the output the directory 
> in the same fashion as it isin here). Any clues on how to do 
> it?. Thanks in advance         
> 
> View/Reply At: http://www.cups.org/links.php?V53#_USER_COMMENT_1623


I don't think it is possible to do that *in* *a* *secure* way 
(the backend needs to run with root privileges to be able to
write to a user-owned directory).

However, what would be easily possible is modifiying the current
pdf:// backend to do either of thesse:
 
  * depending on the user's home directory $HOME, write the
    result into a specific sub directory, "$HOME/PDFs/"

  * depending on a commandline parameter like "-o targetdir=
    /tmp/my/path/to/pdfs" to write the result accordingly

  * depending on what a (hidden?) file in the user's $HOME,
    has as its content, write to that directory (i.e. hidden 
    file ".mypdfs" has 1 line "outputdir=/home/kurt/pdfs")

Cheers,
Kurt