wine users - Apr 2008 - Printing to a network printer and installing PPD files

I hope I am not asking an obvious question. I have googled and looked in the
obvious places, but I may have missed it. Anyway my question is two fold. How do
I configure for a network printer in Wine and how to I install the printer
specific ppd file?

I am running 0.9.60, which I installed this week, on Mepis (Debian based with
KDE and cups). I can print from PageMaker, but get a warning that wine is using
a generic ppd file.

I have found instructions for printers with ppd files for Crossover Office, but
the directories don't seem to match. Also, most seem to be local printers.
Also the WineHQ HowTo on the subject does not seem to match. For example I
cannot find ~/.wine/config. The users manual simply says that the printer
specific ppd file needs to be used.

Thanks in advance. Sorry to be so dense.

You install printers through CUPS, not wine. If it's properly installed in
CUPS, your wine programs should just see the printer.

Well, it has worked perfectly in Linux for about three years and I can print
from Wine, but Wine does not see the ppd file. Also, the print dialog box is
neither the Linux print dialog box nor the Windows in VirtualBox dialog box and
some features and selections are not available. I assume that all of this is due
to the missing ppd file.

But thanks for the input.

I dug out my old Pagemaker 6.5 cd and installed it. Pagemaker saw all my CUPS
printers with no problem, though it did give me a warning message about an
"outdated or unknown ppd file." Are you having the same problem with
other wine programs, or is it just Pagemaker?

Thanks for the reply. I am running PM 7, though it looks like you got the same
results as I did. I did install the ppd file in the appropriate PM directory
(/home/Rob/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe/PageMaker 7.0/RSRC/USENGLSH/ppd4)
just like in Windows in VB (C:\Program Files\Adobe\PageMaker
7.0\RSRC\USENGLSH\ppd4). PM is pretty much the only application that I print
from from Wine. Just to see I opened Wordpad and printed a test page. The
printer dialog box was the normal Windows dialog box. I would guess the
difference is that PM recognizes the printer as a PostScript printer and looks
for the ppd file.

This link http://www.la-sorciere.de/Wine-HOWTO/wineprintconfig.html talks about
the need to configure for the ppd file, but I could not make sense of it.

IIRC, the ppd file is configured into the CUPS server, and
is then retrieved over the network by CUPS clients.
Or something like that.

okie2003 wrote:
>  I did install the ppd file in the appropriate PM directory
(/home/Rob/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe/PageMaker 7.0/RSRC/USENGLSH/ppd4)
just like in Windows in VB (C:\Program Files\Adobe\PageMaker
7.0\RSRC\USENGLSH\ppd4).
> 
Is the ppd file you are talking about the windows driver that came with
Pagemaker? Because you don't need to install that--wine should just use
whatever printers are installed in CUPS. That's what it did on my system.
The warning I got about an unknown driver, I think, simply stems from the fact
that the printer I am using did not exist when Pagemaker was created.

Try deleting that ppd file from your Pagemaker directory and see if Pagemaker
can then see your CUPS printer. If that doesn't work, you may have to start
over--delete the .wine directory, then reinstall Pagemaker without installing
the ppd files that came with it. (And if that doesn't work, I'm afraid
I'm out of ideas for the moment.)

okie2003 wrote:
> This link http://www.la-sorciere.de/Wine-HOWTO/wineprintconfig.html talks
about the need to configure for the ppd file, but I could not make sense of it.
That how-to is badly outdated--the date on the home page is 2003.