# The &klpq; Handbook

Christoph
Neerfeld

    chris@kde.org

Hans Petter
Bieker

    bieker@kde.org

2000-12-14
1.00.01
2000
Christoph Neerfeld
&FDLNotice;

This Handbook describes &klpq; Version 1.0.1

KDE
KLpq
printing
queueing
lpq

## Introduction

&klpq; is a frontend to the print spooler. Its primary purpose is displaying the print queue and removing jobs from the queue. But you can even disable/enable printing or move jobs to the top of the queue, if you have the necessary access permissions.

&klpq; does not modify the printqueue by itself, but uses the underlying commands: `lpq`, `lprm` and `lpc`. For this reason &klpq; should be safe as long as `lpq`, `lprm` and `lpc` are safe.

- supports BSD, PPR and LPRng spooling systems

- network transparency

- supports DRAG & DROP

## Usage

### Starting &klpq;

    	klpq

    	  -n
    	  -P printer
              file1 file2 URL1 URL2

On first startup &klpq; asks you which print spooler you use. &klpq; supports BSD, PPR and LPRng. If you don't know which spooler is installed on your system you will most probably have BSD. If &klpq; does not display your printqueue, try one of the other settings (You may change the spooling system from config spooler ).

Without any arguments &klpq; searches for the environment variable `PRINTER` and tries to display the contents of the corresponding queue. If `PRINTER` i s not set, it displays the contents of the queue named `lp`. If no queue with this name exists it displays the first printer queue in your printcap file.

With the file argument you may use &klpq; as a replacement for `lpr`. You don't have to type `lpr file_to_print; klpq` but may type directly `klpq file_to_print`. &klpq; executes `lpr` for you. The `-P` option specifies the spool area to use. Currently no other options to `lpr` are supported.

The `-n` option tells &klpq; not to display the queue if a filename was given on the command line. E.g.e> `klpq `-n file_to_print`` lets &klpq; send the file to the printer and exit immediatly. `klpq `-n`` without file argument will start &klpq; as normal.

&klpq; now supports URLs as arguments on the command line. &klpq; will use Konqueror to copy the file to a temporary file on the local system and sends it to the printer.

Please note that &klpq; must be running during the download. If you quit &klpq; earlier the files will not be printed.

DRAG & DROP: You may drag any URLurl> out of Konqueror and drop it on the &klpq; window. &klpq; will copy the URL to a temporary file and send it to the printer.

### The Main Window

&klpq; is quite easy to use, so I just want to say some words about things that are not obvious:

If the Auto button is pressed down, &klpq; rereads the current printqueue every "no" seconds, so you don't have to hit the Update. You may change the 'no' of seconds by selecting config Auto update from the menu. If you set "no" to 0, then the Auto button will be completely disabled.

If you get the message This is a privileged command, than you have to be root or any other privileged user to execute this command and if you try to remove a printjob of another user, this is silently ignored.

There are several key accelerators defined:

Accelerator Key: | Action
--- | ---
U | like pressing the Update button
R | like pressing the Remove button
T | Like pressing the Make Top button
A | Like pressing the Auto button
Left Arrow | Displays the previous queue
Right Arrow | Displays the next queue

### The spooler dialog

In the spooler dialog you can choose your spooling system from BSD, PPR or LPRng. Afterwards you have to set the paths for the spooling commands. You can get help from the man-pages of your spooling system.

## Todo

- more KDE keyboard commands with kkeyconfig

- display all printqueues at once

- dock a mini status window into Kicker

- support more commands from lprng

- do a complete rewrite of &klpq; ;-)

Anything else?

## Author

My name is Christoph Neerfeld. I am a student of applied computer sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Sankt Augustin, Germany. Feel free to contact me and send me your reports, wishes or a postcard from your home town. I like to get postcards.

My thanks go to

- Victor Kolossov kolosov@iris1.itep.ru for basic support for LPRng

- Remco Treffkorn remco@rvt.com for basic support for ppr

and many other people for bug reports and suggestions.

&klpq; is Copyright 1997/98 Christoph Neerfeld chris@kde.org

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &klpq;

&klpq; is a part of the KDE project http://www.kde.org. KLpq can be found on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main ftp site of the KDE project. There are links to many FTP mirrors there as well.

### Requirements

In order to successfully compile &klpq;, you need the latest versions of libkdecore and libkfm. All required libraries as well as &klpq; itself can be found on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/.

In addition to the KDE-libraries you will need a properly configured printcap file in `/etc/printcap`.

### Compilation and Installation

&klpq; is normally a part of the package kdeutils release and therefore will be automatically installed with other KDE applications in the normal course of the package.

If you need to compile and install &klpq; yourself on your system, type the following in the base directory of the &klpq; distribution:

    % ./configure
    % make
    % make install

Since &klpq; uses autoconf, you should not have trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems, please report them to the KDE mailing lists.