![]() The virtual printer should now be available for you to use.ġ.8 When you come to print from an application, if you select Virtual_PDF_Printer from the list of available printers the PDF file will be saved in the directory /var/spool/cups-pdf//. Then click ‘Continue’.ġ.6 Select ‘Generic’ in the ‘Make:’ box, and click ‘Continue’.ġ.7 Select ‘Generic CUPS-PDF Printer (w/ options) (en)’ in the ‘Model:’ box, and click ‘Add Printer’. For example, I entered ‘Virtual_PDF_Printer’, ‘Virtual PDF Printer’ and ‘Mesh Edge DX’ (without the quotes), respectively. If prompted, enter the username ‘root’ (without the quotes) and the root user’s password.ġ.4 Select ‘CUPS-PDF (Virtual PDF Printer)’ in the list of local printers, and click ‘Continue’.ġ.5 Enter a name, decription and location for the virtual printer. I use Gentoo Linux, but the procedure will be similar in other distributions (package manager commands excepted).ġ.0 Installation of the cups-pdf driver and virtual printerġ.2 Launch a Web browser and enter in the Address bar to display the CUPS Printer Manager.ġ.3 Click on ‘Administration’ to call up the Administration page, then click ‘Add Printer’. My single shell script using KDialog is listed further down.įirst I will explain how to install the CUPS PDF driver package, then how to use the CUPS Printer Manager to install the virtual printer, and finally how to use a shell script with either Zenity or KDialog in order to display a graphical dialogue box prompting you to specify the directory and file name for the PDF file to be created. My thanks go to him for his clever code in his two shell scripts, as I would never have worked it out myself. I was determined to have a single shell script using KDialog, and was able to conflate sicvolo‘s two-script solution. You can see the KDialog solutions by the two users ( Havin_it and sicvolo) in Gentoo Forums thread CUPS-PDF “Save As” with kdialog. In contrast, a solution using Zenity uses only one shell script. However, a couple of Gentoo users were able to use KDialog successfully with the CUPS PDF driver, each with a different approach to the other, but their approaches both consisted of two shell scripts. My shell script using Zenity is listed further down.Īlthough Zenity has performed this job perfectly for me in all releases of KDE since 2007, it rankled that I could not get KDialog to do the job. However, although I use KDE on my main laptop, I was unable to get KDialog working properly in a shell script launched by the CUPS PDF driver, so I resorted to using Zenity, which I found simple to use and reliable. KDialog (KDE/Qt) and Zenity (GTK+) are two well-known dialogue box tools for use in shell scripts (see, for example, the Linux Magazine article Adding graphic elements to your scripts with Zenity and KDialog). I use the driver in conjunction with a shell script that calls a utility to display a ‘Save As’ dialogue box so the user can specify the directory and name of the PDF file. I install the package net-print/cups-pdf and use the CUPS Printer Manager in a browser to set up a virtual printer to ‘print’ PDF files. Fortunately, CUPS has a driver named CUPS-PDF which you can install to create a virtual printer that will produce PDF files. However, the Print to File (PDF) option does not appear in the list of available printers in all applications. For applications without built-in support for creating PDF files there may already be an installed ‘Print to File (PDF)’ driver in your installation that you can use. Nevertheless, if you're using any of the other LibreOffice tools, you already have this installed on your Linux distro so why not use it? If you need a solid Linux Mint PDF editor, for instance, this is the application you may be looking for.Some applications, such as LibreOffice, have built-in support for exporting their output to PDF files. The software can be used to edit PDF text or manipulate content any way you want, but its other capabilities are limited to PDF creation and content addition. No advanced features such as file conversion, batch process, OCR, etc.Īnother useful Linux PDF editor is LibreOffice Draw, which is part of the LibreOffice suite of document tools. ![]() Text magnifier for reading the fine print.Convenient for selecting and copying text.The standout feature is that it also supports viewing other formats such as documents, images, comics, etc. Other features include convenient content views such as the Content Panel and Thumbnail Panel, as well as digital signature creation, addition, and validation. The lack of PDF editing is somewhat offset by a full array of annotation tools to mark up your PDF workflows.
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