OT for Fedora; but, pertinent to Linux printing??

[Tony Nelson]

At 5:16 AM -0400 5/13/06, William Case wrote:
>Hi;
>I want to write some small scripts for printing files.  I've looked in
>man lpr, a2ps, enscript, CUPS and googled.  Can someone tell me where I
>can find the appropriate information to do the following?
>
>Script #1:  Print any text file to 5.5" x 8.5" sheets of paper.  I keep
>my scrap printer paper and cut it in half for notes to myself.  I want a
>script that can use the same scrap paper to print notes etc. that I
>write to myself.  I write them on all kinds of different word processors
>and text editors but want to print them (unformatted if necessary) so I
>can pocket them.
>
>Either I have mis-read or I don't understand something, but how do I set
>up a one-time temporary page size in the script and then return it to
>letter size?  Where should I look?  What printing program?  My printers
>(HP psc 1315 & Epson colour stylus 740) allow custom sizes.

What I have seen suggested is instead to set up an additional "printer"
with the size paper you want.


>Script #2: Some suggestions on how I might go about accomplishing Script
>#2 would be appreciated.  I want to start a print job X (user variable)
>number of lines down on the first sheet or page.  This is so that if I
>have a note that is, say, 12 lines long and I want to add more I can
>rerun the sheet through the printer and add the new text to the white
>space after line 12 of the sheet of paper.
>
>All of the above can be done through a word processor but I am hoping to
>set something up that is quick and dirty.

Well, just output n blank lines and then the desired file(s) to the print
job.  Something like:

    ( for (( i=0 ; i<$X ; i=i+1 )) ; do echo ; done ; cat $f ) | lpr

(Note that I haven't actually printed that way; I just piped to less.)
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