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openprinting:database:foomaticfaq

Foomatic FAQ

General Questions

What is foomatic?

Foomatic is a system that creates a PPD file from a database. The PPDs are created by the foomatic-db-engine package, the database resides in the package foomatic-db, and to make the PPDs working with all common printing systems the universal filter foomatic-rip (from the foomatic-filters package) is needed.

What are cupsomatic? lpdomatic? pdqomatic?

These were scripts that connect PPD's to the specific named spooler. With introduction of Foomatic 3.x the *omatic scripts are unified into a single script called foomatic-rip.

How do I use unprintable margins with gimp-print?

If you are using Gimp-Print 4.3.7, you need to apply the following two patches to get generation of the “*ImageableArea” lines in the Foomatic PPD files and to work around a bug in the Gimp-Print database of printer capabilities:

Missing Files Patch

Margins Patch

Without the first patch you cannot compile Gimp-Print 4.3.7 at all due to two files being forgotten to be added to the tarball.

If you use Gimp-Print 4.3.x from CVS, please update from the CVS again, as my first upload of unprintable margin support was broken.

Also update the CVS of “foomatic-db-engine”, I have fixed a small bug there.

openprinting/database/foomaticfaq.txt · Last modified: 2017/09/12 14:53 by sampablokuper