Sometimes it is better to be a little behind the times. CentOS, until the recently released 6.6 upgrade, used OLD versions of cups and cups-pdf. The old cups-pdf would produce a full featured pdf file from which I could select and copy text and which I could index with recoll. Now that they have caught up with the rest of the Linux world the pdf files are rather poor quality and can not be manipulated as were the older ones.

It seems that I have an alternative in the "Print to File" option which is presented at print time from programs such as Firefox. This produces an acceptable pdf file. However, the file name must be input as print time - a minor annoyance. cups-pdf had an option to begin the file name with the print job number so as never to produce a duplicate file name. Being basically lazy I loved this feature

Can someone tell me if there is a similar capability in "Print to File" and/or where options for this feature are stored/modified? This does not appear to be a Firefox feature as it is also present when printing from gimp or eog. I suspect is is a part of gnome(?)

TIA,

Ken

I imagine it's part of ghostscript. gs does a lot with ps files, and handles printers and pdfs as well. It also gives utilities ps* and pdf* in /usr/bin.

gs itself can be called with -sOutPutFile=ps or pdf ans -sInPutFile=ps pr pdf. man gs.

Thanks business_kid