Print PDF

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Print to PDF

A simple utility to enable a user to email a PDF to a special account that should print the document. Particularly useful for mobile phones

About

This came about form the following forum post:

https://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,52825.0.html

Contrib

smeserver-print-pdf

Development has been started. There are two versions currently:

https://github.com/reetp/smeserver-print-pdf

This attempts to use internal user password/details. Still work in progress

Send a mail to printpdf@yourserver.org

smeserver-qmail-printpdf

Get the code from here:

https://github.com/reetp/smeserver-qmail-printpdf

or

Add the reetp repo:

https://wiki.contribs.org/User:ReetP

yum --enablerepo=reetp install smeserver-qmail-printpdf

This uses a password set in the DB and used in the subject of the email (?)

You only need a "printpdf" user, if you want un-authenticated users to be able to print


Key Name Key Default Key Options
status enabled disabled
PrinterName None variable
Media A4 variable
Password None variable
TmpDir /tmp/printpdf variable


Modify the chosen key and then run

signal-event remoteaccess-update

Debugging

Any comments should be posted in the forums

Alternatives from previous version

  Note:
this is a legacy solution but this could be an interesting thing to re-implement to use a network printer


On SME 7 a solution was implemented using a network drive : PDF over Lan is a Samba email PDF printer for your SME 7 Server. The SME 7 Server user receives an email of the PDF and also the PDF is saved \\servername\pdfdrop

source : http://mirror.canada.pialasse.com/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/contribs/zoneminder/SRPMS/smeserver-pdf-over-lan-2.0-01.src.rpm


Install

wget http://mirror.canada.pialasse.com/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/contribs/zoneminder/smeserver-pdf-over-lan-2.0-01.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh smeserver-pdf-over-lan-2.0-01.noarch.rpm

Installing Windows PDF Printer Driver Thanks to http://www.sonoracomm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170 (Gene Cooper)

Simple Method

Add a new network printer to the Windows client PC. Browse to the \\server\pdf printer share and use the Apple Color Laserwriter 12/600 driver. Less Simple Method

This method may give you more control of your PDF output files.

On a Windows PC, download the Adobe postscript print driver and the Adobe Acrobat Distiller .ppd (postscript printer definition) file.

Extract the adobe.zip ppd archive and save the ADIST5.PPD (English) file. The others are for other languages.

The Adobe printer driver is a self-installing Windows executable. Run it and try to install the network PDF printer. When prompted, choose the ADIST5.PPD file and 'Acrobat Distiller'.

If you have problems getting the Adobe postscript driver installed as a network printer, try installing it as a local printer then go in to the printer properties after the installation and change the port to the UNC path of the printer (\\servername\pdf). Retrieve PDF Files

The newly created .pdf files are left in the \\servername\pdfdrop file share on the server.

You may choose to also modify the logon script to map a drive letter to this new I-Bay to make accessing the newly created PDF files easier.


Uninstall

rpm -e smeserver-pdf-over-lan