While really really bored, Simon J. Gerraty wrote:
> Yes you can do some of these tricks with lpr, by making a filter
> script do all the work, but its much harder because the filter script
> is not invoked with any really useful arguments (as I recall).  By
> contrast the lp interface script is told just about everything it
> needs to go and look up private data bases about printer details etc
> etc etc.  Some people hate the complexity - I like the flexibility.

I agree; the arguments passed to scripts by lpr/lpd are lacking.
Having written scripts which attempt to print useful info in the borders,
this qualifies me to say that the user should not have to do any magick
with pr (manually) before passing it to lpr.

It seems faulty to me that you can do stuff by running "pr file | lpr"
that you could not do in a filter.  After all, the idea of a filter is
to do that stuff for us!

All other arguments aside, I had to put my sqprint program as a CIF filter.
Imagine the suprise when someone actually tries to use it on a CIF file.

If anyone writes something to replace lpr, maybe you might look at having
some kind of auto-identification via file(1) for those who are too lazy
to specify which filter to use on the command line? (would be very cool)
-- 
VaX#n8 (vak-sa-nate) - n, CS senior++ and Unix junkie - vax@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Deal with evil through strength, yet encourage good through trust.    - PGP me