Free printing in software for linux

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.)

CodePrinter is a tiny utility to print out source code or other text files. CodePrinter projects main intent is to provide you with print-outs for your code reviews and to save some paper by fitting two code pages onto one sheet of paper.
CodePrinter is written in Java and makes use of the Java Printing API. Its an Open Source project hosted at SourceForge.net and is protected by the GNU General Public License.
Unix- & Linux people should consider a2ps as an alternative.
Main features:
- Printing of one or multiple files
- Line numbering
- Simple syntax highlighting for .java, .html and .xml files
- Preview with zoom-in/zoom-out functionality
- Printing of a single or all previewed pages
- Font and font size selection

pyWings project allows to consult the Newwings oracle.
Its a completely original modern oracle inspired by the I Ching.
pyWings is written in Python, using the Tkinter interface to the Tk GUI toolkit.
Main features:
- allows saving/restoring of readings for use within pyWings
- simple, highly graphical user interface
- readings may also be saved as text, for subsequent printing or whatever
- formatted hypertext help and information viewer
- pyWings should be portable across X11, Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and MacOS
Enhancements:
- first public release

HP Linux Imaging and Printing Driver Project consists of two projects:

1) HPIJS, a printer driver for HP devices

2) HP Linux Imaging and Printing (HPLIP), a complete printing and imaging solution for Linux (note: HPLIP includes HPIJS).

The ser2net daemon allows telnet and TCP sessions to be established with a units serial ports. Note that ser2net supports RFC 2217 (remote control of serial port parameters), but you must have a complient client. The only one I know it is kermit application (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit).
Enhancements:
- dataxfer.c, devcfg.c, devcfg.h, ser2net.conf, ser2net.8: Added a s banner token for printing out the serial parameters.
- ser2net.conf: Cleaned up the ugly banner3.
- Makefile.am: Add ser2net.init to EXTRA_DIST.
- configure.in: Move to version 2.3.

FSP Client is single executable client for the FSP protocol. Client uses an FTP-like user interface. People usually find this program easier to use that multiple client programs in FSP protocol suite. If you are at least somewhat familiar with command line FTP and want to try FSP, this program is a good choice for you.
There is a help command; not a very good one, but it does tell you the commands. Type `help to get a list of all commands; to get a brief description of a command, type `help name (`name being the command); to get brief help on all commands type `help all (warning: there are 46 commands).
See the manual page fsp(1) for a somewhat longer description...
Note for versions since 0.0-g: the command `cat, `get, `du, and `tar can all take a `-r flag -- this causes the commands to process subdirectories as well as files. e.g., `du will give the disk usage of the current directory; `du -r will give the disk usage of the current directory and _all_ subdirectories (resursively). The `timeout command causes communications to return an error code if the timeout occurs; this means that:
timeout 30
pro
iferror exit
is a good way of determining whether a remote site is alive or not when writing scripts. The `ver should only return an error if the timeout occurs -- however, pre-2.6.3 servers return version strings as an error which messes up that usage...
Macros are, for want of a better word, stupid. Until parameter variables are allowed, they can not do very much. Common ones (and user set up options) should be defined in the file ~/.fsprc (i.e., .fsprc in your home directory). This filename can be changed by setting the environment variable FSPRC. An example .fsprc is supplied in the file `fsprc in this directory.
It is also now possible to have commands like:
ls -l | less
Anything after the first `| symbol is fed the output of the builtin command...
rehash may need a little explanation -- when you do an ls, the directory information is fetched to the local end and stays there (thanks to the original authors stuff); if you want to check if anything has been updated since you did an ls of a directory, then you must rehash first. The client is now a bit more intelligent than it used to be (i.e., pre `d release); it will automatically mark directories as out-of-date if it knows that it has modified them (e.g., by put, or mkdir or whatever). Its the wrong command name, but it brings back fond memories of csh... It may sound like a disadvantage -- in fact it is an enormous benefit having it work this way... *much* faster.
All the commands which have a f equivalent in the original distribution behave as before; well, pretty much.
Oh, one last thing -- command lines cant have continuations... yet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you use it and like it, mail me. I need the encouragement If you use it and dont like it, mail me. I need bringing back down to earth...
Basically, even though it is pre-alpha, I would still like to know whether people like it or not... just dont complain too loud when it doesnt work right :-)
Enhancements:
- fsprc: wrack removed, decss added
- fixed statistics printing in stat command
- client/util.c add static prototype declaration
- avoid hammering of down sites
- fsprc: another FSP site added

Root-tail is a program that allows printing of text directly to the X11 root window wherever you choose, much like running rxvt with a pixmap background but without the hassle and with more features.
Install:
xmkmf -a
make
make install
make install.man
Enhancements:
- replaced default font by "*" to "ensure" some font is found.
- accept hexadecimal window ids, as does everybody else(?).
- made it compile with ansi-89-based compilers again.
- add hack to support nautilus (not very stable, nautilus should either use extended window manager hints or __SWM_VROOT, as everybody else does).
- do not initialize the window twice (fixes problems with multiple visuals).
- new option: -minspace.
- fixed seg fault if geometry is too short to fit a single line
- fix bug which became apparent if -no-filename or null

Ghostscript is a processor for PostScript and PDF files. AFPL Ghostscript can rasterize these files to a wide variety of printers, devices for screen preview, and image file formats.
Since applications tend to prepare pages for printing in a high-level format such as PostScript, most Unix users with low-level bitmap printers, such as inkjets, use GhostScript as part of the printing process.
In addition, Ghostscript is capable of converting PostScript files, functionality comparable to Adobe Acrobat Distiller, but on the command line. In addition, Ghostscript is used for file import and viewing by a great many other applications, including xv, ImageMagick, gimp, and xdvi.
Several GUI wrappers for viewing PostScript and PDF files exist, including GSview, ghostview, gv, ggv, and kghostview. This is far from a comprehensive list.
Main features:
- An interpreter for the PostScript (TM) language, with the ability to convert PostScript language files to many raster formats, view them on displays, and print them on printers that dont have PostScript language capability built in;
- An interpreter for Portable Document Format (PDF) files, with the same abilities;
- The ability to convert PostScript language files to PDF (with some limitations) and vice versa; and
- A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that implement the graphics capabilities that appear as primitive operations in the PostScript language.