Hello,

I would like to write a program or shell script that:

- can be a printer for any program that might want to print things

- can take whatever is asked to be printed and send to one or more other printers (e.g., pipe the content to 2 printers at once)

How may I achieve this? I see many threads on similar subjects but not much practical content.

IIRC, CUPS (Common Unix Print System) allows to have virtual printers and a file can serve as that virtual printer. Then sending that file to a number of printers is trivial, isn't it ? I.e. you just launch a printing process per printer and that's it.

Ok.

Mmm... I guess. Can you tell me how, then? Or where could I learn how do it?

For me, this is trivial only manually, but I am searching an automated solution.

Thank you

I have found http://www.cups.org/doc-1.1/sam.html but I am lost within it.

I am not sure if it tells me how to do what I want.

From reading everything said until now, I can't get it.

Where exactly are you lost ?
...
http://www.cups-pdf.de/

I didn't read anything about duplicating a job to one or more printers. What I have read about printer classes indicates that these classes can't do what I want.

From what I have read, I think that a filter also can't do what I want.

Seeing the server directives (http://www.cups.org/doc-1.1/sam.html#7_4) I didn't see anything either.

And also I haven't see anything about creating virtual printers and how to assign them an arbitrary output location (a physical printer or files).

I have read their documentation and their commented configuration file. It doesn't seem to do duplication of a job out of the box.


Am I missing something that is simple? Or am I beeing unclear on what I need? (english is not my first language)

Thank you

You are missing an important element of the original plan:

I.e. you can have a script monitoring creation of in this case PDF files and sending each file to a number of printers if you need more than one copy and if you want copies to be printed in parallel.

But there is something about "printer classes" and "load balancing" - maybe these can give what you need out of the box.

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