SUMMARY: Printing from Solaris 10 to LPR on Windows 2008

Thanks to all who answered -- some with suggestions, some with
sympathy, most with both. :7)

   The consensus was that yes, I pretty much do need some software to
send print jobs, and that printing direct to the printers is a far
better bet than trying to make something work with the Windows LPR
spoolers. Since I already have a piece of software managing printer
queues and print jobs (it's called Xi-Text), and it works all right,
there would have to be pretty significant benefits to justify
switching over to something new.

   HP offers a product called JetDirect, which is available on their
web site. (I used to use this some years ago, as it was a very good
source for model-specific printer drivers/interface scripts.)

   CUPS was suggested. It is basically the same as what we use now
(Xi-Text), as I mentioned above.

   GhostScript came up, but that's got its own chain of dependencies.

   Thanks again, everyone.

- Will


Original question from Thu, Apr 5, 2012:
>
> I want badly to send plaintext print jobs from Solaris 10 servers to
> queues on a Windows 2008 server. The Windows server ignores common
> options (like `-o compressed` or `-o cpi=16`), which is a problem for
> our unusually wide reports.
>
>   Is there another protocol to use (like Samba/SMB)? Is there a list
> someplace of the arguments that Microsoft's LPR *does* support? Do I
> actually need to set these up as local Solaris queues which first chop
> the job down to 80 characters and then send the output to the Windows
> queue?
>
>   Or should I just suck it up and print directly to the printers'
> built-in JetDirect interfaces?
>
>   Thank you for any advice, links, or sympathy.
>
> - Will Enestvedt
> Providence, RI