12.4. Printing Under Mandrake Linux

This section will deal with using printers under Mandrake Linux with KPrinter.

There are two ways to print documents with KPrinter: from applications, calling KPrinter as the "print command", or from the command line. Any application which supports the definition of its printing command will be able to use KPrinter.

12.4.1. KPrinter's Dialog Description

With KPrinter, you can set many options for printing your documents, like the output device (generally a physical, local or remote printer), the number of copies, paper size, printer resolution, etc. It runs under every window manager and desktop environment, not only KDE.

Figure 12-16. KPrinter Window

KPrinter's window is divided in three areas: Printer (selection of the device and its properties), Page Selection (selection of which pages to print) and Copies (how many copies and in which order).

12.4.1.1. The Printer Section

In this section, you set the device where you are going to print into and its properties, like page size, resolution, etc. In the Name: pull-down list, all the available printers are listed. Just select the one you want to print to.

Press the Properties... button to change the device's options. Please note that the options available will be dependent of the chosen device.

Figure 12-17. Printer Properties Window

Most options available are self-explanatory. Maybe one worth mentioning is Pages per sheet (set to 2 in the example). This lets you put up to 4 pages onto a single sheet of paper (or 8 if you print on both sides). This is a nice feature to print book drafts or other lengthy material which change often.

Figure 12-18. Changing Printer Resolution

If you want to change printer-specific options such as the resolution of the printing device, you have to click on the Advanced tab. There, you will find the Resolution: option under some of the available categories. When you click on it, all available resolutions will be displayed in the bottom part of the window. Select the one you want from the list.

Among the many other settings available under the Advanced tab are printing modes which use much less toner or ink (search for something like "economy mode" or "toner density"). However, the output is much paler.

Once you are satisfied with your settings, press the Ok button. The Save button saves the current settings for the next printing jobs.

12.4.1.2. The Page Selection Section

Under Page Selection, the following options are available:

All

Prints all of the document's pages.

Current

Prints only the document's current page. This option might not be available at all times.

Range

Allows you to specify page ranges to print. You can specify pages or groups of pages separated by commas (1,2,5 prints pages 1, 2 and 5; 1-3, 7-21 prints pages 1 to 3 and 7 to 21, etc.).

The Page set: pull-down list lets you specify pre-defined sets of pages to print (All pages, Odd pages or Even pages).

This allows you to print double-sided on a printer without a duplex unit: print the odd pages, turn the stack of printed pages over and put them back into the input tray, then print the even pages.

12.4.1.3. The Copies Section

Use the little arrows to increase/decrease the number of copies or just type the number of copies you want to print in the Copies: field.

When you are printing multiple copies, you can check the Collate check box to print the whole document before starting to print the second copy, instead of getting all copies of page number 1, then all copies of page number 2, and so on.

The Reverse check box makes the printing start at the last page and end at the first one (the document is printed "backwards"). This option is useful if your printer leaves the paper sheets face-up in the output tray.

12.4.2. Using KPrinter

We will explain how to setup Galeon to use KPrinter.

For example, when you invoke Galeon's printing dialog (pressing Ctrl+P or with File->Print), all you have to do is to type kprinter in the Printer field, as shown in figure 12-19, and click on the Print button.

Figure 12-19. Telling Galeon to Print With KPrinter

The procedure for other applications is similar to the one described above, so play around a little bit to find out how to tell your application which printing command to use.

From the command line, its invocation is simple: kprinter file_to_print &.

Note

You need to be under X for the above command to work.

Enjoy printing with your Mandrake Linux system and KPrinter!


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