Creating a Postscript Printer

[Guest]

I recently upgraded my department with a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard and Adobe CS5 with Acrobat 9 and I also use Quark 8. Is there a way to create a Virtual PS Printer?

[Helge Blischke]

I suppose you mean a "printer" that "prints" to a file.

In that case, I'd suggest to set up the printer directly using the CUPS web interface.

First, download the prtofile backend from links at the CUPS website (www.cups.org),

install it as documented, and then

point your standard browser

(presumably Safari) to http:localhost:631

and go to "administration" and then "add a printer".

You need administrative rights to go this way, and, as you are working on Snow Leopard,

you may need to modify some sandbox profiles unless you restrict yourself to store the

print files into either /var/tmp or your own home directory (or a suitable subdirectory thereof).

You may e-mail me directly at a dot blischke at acm dot org if you need special advice.

Helge

[benwiggy]

In short, you need to have a CUPS "backend" that saves the PS to disk. This is normally written in Unix shell script (the commands used in Terminal).

See this article for more info:

http://osdir.com/ml/printing.cups.devel/2004-10/msg00007.html

I have modified this script, and made my own version of it. I can't upload it here, however.

As Helge points out, because of Sandboxing security in 10.6, CUPS can only save files to locations where ANY user can write. So inside your own user account is out of bounds. The usual locations are therefore the Users/Shared folders, or /var or /tmp.

(The increased security is the reason why the Adobe PDF queue no longer works in Snow Leopard. However, it would not be impossible to reinstate the PDF print queue, with a bit of work, if you see what I'm saying....)

The folder that my PS print queue saves into is also a Distiller Watched folder. I have an alias to the Out folder on my Desktop, where I can collect the PDFs and process them further.