From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-05-18T04:42:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Print quota management in Ruby?


On May 17, 2006, at 10:23 AM, Ohad Lutzky wrote:

> It would be nice if I could just have an "upload your file, we'll  
> print
> it"
> solution, but since people want to print Powerpoint slides (in Hebrew,
> which
> Openoffice doesn't properly convert), that's not possible. (Adobe
> Acrobat isn't
> installed on the workstations, so we can't make people upload PDFs.
>
> The big questions are these:
>   - Do I 'spoof' a printer for the queue? Or do I 'block' other  
> printers
> like Pykota does? Something else perhaps?
>   - How do I count pages? Will postscript be able to do that?
>
> Any input would be appreciated.
>

Oh but you can. Don't share a real printer. Install ghostscript, and  
use that to produce .ps in some directory when people "print", which  
you can then convert to pdf if you want (ps2pdf) or send off as is to  
the real printer. They still get to click on file > print, and you  
still get the benefits of upload your file and we'll print it scenario.

As far as displaying a message on the windows box, I believe you can  
use samba to send 'net send msg' style messages.