Free printers and faxes software for linux

printerpowerd project is a Daemon to automatically turn a printer on and off.

printerpowerd is a little Python script designed for users of older printers who want to save power when not using their printer, without manually turning it on and off.

It runs, checking the printer queue directory every five seconds, turns it on when it sees a job, and turns it off after a configurable amount of idle time.

It allows you to turn a printer on and off (when idle) using X10 or any other abitrary command.

Print Plug-In provides a basic printing capability for The GIMP.
The current release supports PostScript, PCL (HP LaserJet and DeskJet), and ESC/P2 (EPSON Stylus Color) printers. The PostScript printer drivers handle PPD (PostScript Printer Description) files if you have them.
Using the Print Plug-In:
The Printer option provides selections for many common printers. Currently the print plug-in supports the following printers:
- PostScript printers
- HP DeskJet 500, 500C, 520, 540C, 600C, 660C, 68xC, 69xC, 850C, 855C, 855Cse, 855Cxi, 870Cse, 870Cxi, 1100C, 1120C, 1200C, and 1600C printers
- HP LaserJet II, III, IIIp, IIIsi, 4, 4L, 4P, 4V, 4Si, 5, 5FS, 5L, 5P, 5SE, 5Si, 6L, 6P printers
- EPSON Stylus Color, Color Pro, Color Pro XL, Color 400, Color 500, Color 600, Color 800, Color 1500, Color 1520, and Color 3000.
The Output Type option controls whether the printed output is in color or B&W (grayscale). This option is silently forced to B&W for grayscale images and B&W-only printers.
The Media Size option controls the size of the output. By default images are printed to fit the page and are automatically rotated to fill the largest area possible.
The Media Type option tells the printer what type of media is being used (Plain, Coated, etc). Not all printers support the media type option.
The Media Source option tells the printer which paper tray to print from. Not all printers support the media source option.
The Resolution option controls the resolution of the output. Not all printers support the resolution option.
The Orientation option controls whether the output is automatically rotated for maximum page coverage (Auto) or set to a specific orientation (Portrait or Landscape).
The Scaling option controls how large the printed image is. The default is to scale to a percentage of the printable area of the page. You can also specify an image resolution in pixels-per-inch (PPI) by clicking on the PPI radio button. The image is centered by default, however you can adjust the position of the image on the page by dragging the preview image.
The Brightness option controls the overall printed image brightness. A brightness of 100 is usually good for most B&W and PostScript printers, while most inkjet printers need a brightness between 100 and 120 for acceptable results.
Printing to a File
If you want to print to a file, select File from the Printer list. A file chooser dialog is displayed when you press the Print button. Warning, when you print to a file any existing file will be silently overwritten by this release of the plug-in!
Layered Images
Like most plug-ins, the print plug-in only reads the image from the active layer. If you want to print a composite of all visible layers you need to merge the layers (CTRL-M) and then print.
Supported Printers/Features
Most of the printer drivers in the print plug-in use the highest supported resolution for a printer, with the following exceptions:
- EPSON Stylus Color 600, 800, 1520, and 3000 - Currently the driver only supports 720 DPI printing in "compatibility" mode. This makes the drivers extremely slow compared to the Windows and Mac drivers. Unfortunately, I cannot provide optimized drivers (nor drivers for 1440x720) because of our NDA with EPSON.
- EPSON Stylus Photo, Photo Ex, Photo 700 - Currently the driver only supports 720 DPI printing in "compatibility" mode. This makes the drivers extremely slow compared to the Windows and Mac drivers, and you dont get the use of the light cyan and magenta inks (again, because of NDA restrictions.)

Lexmark Z11 printer driver for Linux is a Linux printer driver/filter for the Lexmark Z11 printer, supporting color and b/w printing, variable page size and more.
The driver lz11-V2 is an improvement of the lz11 driver, which was first released in 2002. Additionally to the features of lz11, which include variable page sizes and ink saving, the lz11-V2 version comes with a backward compatibility mode for the filters "cZ11" and "cZ11somsom". While the cZ11 filter is emulated in an improved way, which helps to save ink and takes away the grayish look of color prints, the cZ11somsom emulation only supports the basic properties (as InkType and DitherPPI). Ink weighting is not included, but merely needed, because of a new pixel placement algorithm for black and color ink.
"Highlights" of the lz11-V2 are: further improved printing speed for black ink and a tool to align the skew of the black ink cartridge. A smooth-dithering algorithm for black and color prints was added. The driver comes with an improved set of installation and utility scripts that support automatic installation-option-checking, testpage-printing, black-ink-adjustment, automatic installation of foomatic-xml-files as well as automatic installation of the included PPD files for CUPS and PPR. For backward compatibility reason the GhostScript device emulation (as "hpdj", "epsonc", ...) is still included, but should never be offered on "modern" Linux installations.
The original driver-code "cZ11" was written by Christian Kornblum in 2001 (this code still is the backbone of this filter).
WARNING:This driver is known not to work with the Z31 and Z51. In fact, it is known to hose those printers flash in some circumstances!
Enhancements:
- The installer can be called by ./lz11.install --debug, which will produce BMP files instead of paper prints (for test)
- Now the cups-restart is done also properly for Debian and Gentoo
- An installed Z11 printer-queue (PPD) and its options are updated automatically during installation
- The print-job cancelling is now appropriate for hotplug generated devices. Printer "hick-ups" on a resume are prevented
- The print-job cancelling is shown automatically in an "xterm"
- some smaller bug fixes

AsterFax is an email to fax gateway for the transmission of faxes using Asterisk.
Asterisk is an Open Source PABX (or PBX) which provides all of the functionality of a high end PBX, free of charge.
AsterFax builds on the services provided by Asterisk to provide a full fledged email based Fax Gateway.
What that means is that with AsterFax and Asterisk you can send faxes from your desktop using your standard email client without have to install any software on your desktop.
AsterFax can translate a normal email message into a fax message. You simply enter the destination phone number in the To address, compose your email message and click send. Its that easy.
For more formal correspondence AsterFax also supports a growing number of file formats such as PDF, Tiff, Postscript, MS-Word and OpenOffice Writer. You can either attach the file to your email message or for applications such as MS-Word and OpenOffice you can fax directly from the applications by using the Send Email option. The resulting email is sent as a fax message.
If any errors occurring during transmission a error report is sent back to your inbox.
You can also preview how the fax will look by sending email to the special preview address, which simply formats the message ready for transmission and then sends it back to you via email for previewing before the fax is sent.
AsterFax supports a growing list of file types such as Tiff, PDF, postscript, MS-Word, MS-Excel and the OpenOffice Writer. AsterFax is also extensible in that you can easily add support for additional file formats via the AsterFax.xml configuration file providing that you have access to a third party product that can convert your required file format to one of the supported file formats such as PDF or tiffg3.
Additional file formats will follow shortly (see the Roadmap).
For the technically minded AsterFax is written in pure Java and utilizes the Asterisk Manager API to submit jobs.
AsterFax uses external applications to perform the conversion of attachments to the required tiff format for transmission.
AsterFax can be extended via a simple xml configuration file to convert and transmit any other file format providing a suitable conversion application is available.
AsterFax includes a simple standalone SMTP gateway which handles the receipt of emails. AsterFax is not a complete SMTP gateway in that it will only accept messages which are to be faxed. Alternatively AsterFax can be integrated with your existing SMTP server (Sendmail. Postfix, Exchange Server) by way of tools such as Procmail.
AsterFax requires Asterisk@Home or Asterisk with the spandsp (txfax, rvfax) extensions.
Main features:
- Built as an extension to Asterisk.
- Integrated SMTP gateway provides a simple one stop install.
- Support for a number of file formats including: Tiffg3, Postscript, PDF, Word, OpenOffice Writer.
- Preview mode allows previewing of rendered faxes before they are sent.
- Support for multiple Asterisk Channels as well as group channels (e.g. Zap/g0).
- Send faxes without specialised Fax Modems (just use your existing Asterisk/Digium hardware).
- Send faxes directly from MS-Word and OpenOffice Writer
- No client side install required.
- Send standard email (text or html) as fax or attach a Word, PDF, Writer etc.. for transmission as a fax.
- Email body used as a Coversheet to attachments
- Send to multiple recipients in a single message by providing multiple To addresses.
- No special formatting required in the email.
- Extensible support for additional file formats via simple xml configuration file.
- Built-in test suite to aid in configuration and installation.
- Automatic Archiving of all faxes to a designated mailbox.
- Automatic Delivery receipts.
Whats New in 1.0 Stable Release:
- This release is the culmination of months of effort and includes a number of bug fixes as well as a few new features.
- Most notably this is the first release of AsterFax Free Edition.
- The free edition includes all the features of any other edition but will only transmit a single fax at a time.
- Thanks to everyone that has given us feedback and helped make the product what it is today.
- We look forward to working with you all on this release.
Whats New in 1.1 Beta 3 Development Release:
- This release includes an enhancement that allows the header and footer to vary with the destination fax number.
- A different company name and header and footer format can be used for each destination fax number.
- It also adds a new ReturnFaxNumber property, which is included in the header and footer with a %R parameter.
- There is no need to change any configuration files to use beta 3, but AsterFax.xml must be modified according to the release notes to make use of the feature.

PHP Printer Friendly Pages Generator Class is a PHP class that helps you create printer friendly versions of your page very easy.
All you need to do is to insert some custom tags in your pages, tags that will tell the script what needs to be printed from that specific page. An unlimited number of areas can be set for printing allowing you a flexible way of setting up the content to be printed
The output is template driven, meaning that you can customize the printer friendly versions of your pages by adding custom headers, footers, copyright information or whatever extra info that you find appropriate
The script can be instructed to transform links to a readable format (< a href="www.somesite.com" >click here< /a > will become click here [www.somesite.com]) or to remove img tags (< img src="pic.jpg" alt="picture" / > will become [image: picture] or just [image] if no alt attribute is specified)
The code is heavily documented so you can easily understand every aspect of it
See the manual for more info.
This script was inspired by PHPrint which can be found at http://www.tufts.edu/webcentral/phprint.
Enhancements:
- Extra content was not appearing in the correct position but at the end of the content.

Printbill is a sophistocated Unix print billing and/or accounting system with associated administration utilities. It primarily supports LPRng but now has limited CUPS support as well.
A simple print filter and accompanying daemon perform pre-printing billing, post-printing billing, print-accounting and print job quote generation. In addition, various utilities for administrators and users are provided - including programs to check your print quota and usage patterns, a web interface for both users and administrators and a command-line quote generator.
Charge rates may be specified on per-page, per-percent-coverage or both, and any number of printers/print queues can be provided (with different charge rates and printer parameters). Monochrome and CMYK colour printers are supported (with separate charge rates for both colour and black ink).
For all filters, processing can happen out-of-order, and you may prioritise jobs on the basis of size (jobs larger than a threshold can get lower priority or higher priority as desired) and jobs are billed in parallel / overlapping - jobs which finish billing first get printed first.
This is not necessarily the same as the order of arrival. Detailed stats are collected on a per-printer basis for job size, CPU time for each job, page count and ink/toner coverage, so you can analyse the usage patterns for your printers and predict when a cartridge will need to be replaced. It supports an optional user-supplied anything-to-postscript filter, so you can get properly billed for plain text, DVI files, image files, and so forth as well as PostScript.
Databases and configuration files may be stored on a centralised web server. This allows read-only access so that Unix (and conceivably Windows) clients could easily check quota, calculate quotes etc. remotely.
For fun, an additional filter is provided which allows users to deduct fixed amounts from their accounts (we use it to let students buy drinks and food from an unsecured laboratory fridge).
Enhancements:
- Finished support for per-user per-printer stats, tested that it works.

Hints is a Perl extension for parsing /etc/printcap.

SYNOPSIS

use Print::Printcap;

my $printcap = new Print::Printcap;

print join ,,$printcap->printers();

Simple parser for /etc/printcap.

THE PRINT::PRINTCAP CLASS

new

Constructor create instance of Print::Printcap class and parse /etc/printcap. Optional argument is -file => filename for specifying alternate printcap file.

my $printcap = new Print::Printcap;

printers

Return list of printers from /etc/printcap.

my @printers = $printcap->printers();

system-config-printer purpose is to configure a CUPS server (often the local machine) using the CUPS API. The tool is written in Python, using pygtk for the graphical parts and with some Python bindings (pycups) for the CUPS API.
It is largely the same as using the CUPS web interface for configuring printers, but has the advantage of being a native application rather than a web page. It appears in the Fedora menu under System -> Administration -> Printing.
As a result of using the CUPS API the tool is able to configure remote CUPS instances and is not limited to configuring CUPS on the local machine. The CUPS library providing the API uses HTTP and IPP to communicate with the CUPS server.
Enhancements:
- Several improvements for the new-printer wizard have been made, and assorted bugs have been fixed.