306122 - Autodetect printers for "lp" printing system

Status: NEW

(Core :: Printing: Output, enhancement)

Description

[Ting Yong]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050823 Firefox/1.0.6

Hi guys,

I have compiled firefox 1.0.6 on Solaris without xprint support. But the only
printer that show up is "postscript/default"

I can get around that by supplying printer name in print.printer_list
preference. But now the thing is my user need to change the printer everytime
they print. 

So Here are my questions:
1) why, on Solaris, there is only the "Postscript/default" printer avaiable,
whereas on Linux it listed all the postscripts printers I have?
2) Is there a pref option / program / script / programic way / environment var
that can produce a dynamic printer list with the default printer on top or
pre-selected? 

Thanks for help.
yongtin

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Compiled firefox on Solaris without xprint
2. Click "print..."
3. Only postscript/default Printer availible

Actual Results:  
Cannot list all my printers. 

Expected Results:  
See all my printers available
A way to set the default printer on the top of the printer_list / or move the
default printer to the top of the printer_list.

Comment 1

[Andreas Lange]

This is part of our local Mozilla start script:

# setup printer list
MOZILLA_POSTSCRIPT_PRINTER_LIST=`lpstat -a | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort | uniq |
xargs echo`
if echo $MOZILLA_POSTSCRIPT_PRINTER_LIST | /bin/egrep >/dev/null -v "_default";
then
        if [ -n "$LPDEST" ]; then
                PRDEFAULT=$LPDEST
        elif [ -n "$PRINTER" ]; then
                PRDEFAULT=$PRINTER
        else
                PRDEFAULT=`env LANG=C lpstat -d | cut -d ' ' -f 4`
        fi
        echo "No '_default' printer found, adding '$PRDEFAULT' to top of Mozilla
printer list"
        MOZILLA_POSTSCRIPT_PRINTER_LIST="$PRDEFAULT
$MOZILLA_POSTSCRIPT_PRINTER_LIST"
fi
export MOZILLA_POSTSCRIPT_PRINTER_LIST

Comment 2

[Kenneth Herron]

Ting, your linux system probably uses the CUPS package for printing. Mozilla can
autodetect printers with CUPS. There's currently no support for printer
autodetection for the classic lp or lpr printing systems.

<http://kb.mozillazine.org/PostScript_Module> describes how you can set up a
printer list through an environment variable or a preference.

I'm going to morph this into an RFE for lp autodetection. See also bug 240379
for some discussion of the issues, and bug 135695 about lpr autodetection.