Printing thru terminal servers to a Mac X computer

[Tom]

Hi,
I have a employee accessing my terminal server using his
Macintosh apple computer. He wants to be able to print
thru TS to his home printer.

Is this possible and if so..how?

Thanks
Tom

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
Hi,
I have a employee accessing my terminal server using his
Macintosh apple computer. He wants to be able to print
thru TS to his home printer.

Is this possible and if so..how?

Thanks
Tom
.
*** Edit...the printer is connected to the remotely

located macintosh computer.

 

[Jaymes Salestrom]

It must be a postscript printer!

Jaymes
(e-mail address removed)

Laserjet 1300 works well.

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
It must be a postscript printer!

Jaymes
(e-mail address removed)

Laserjet 1300 works well.

Well...that ain't gonna happen!

So..a deskjet type "standard" printer will NEVER work NO
WAY NO HOW through a terminal server to a printer
connected to a Mac computer?

Ok..I all ready ask that question..but just wanna be
certain before I tell this guy he's screwed!

Thanks again

 

[William Smith]

Well...that ain't gonna happen!

So..a deskjet type "standard" printer will NEVER work NO
WAY NO HOW through a terminal server to a printer
connected to a Mac computer?

This is correct. Refer to the Help menu in RDC (I assume you're using
RDC as your TS client) and you'll see that a Postscript printer is
required before a user will be able to print locally.

This is because the Mac must be able to share the printer to the server
so that the server can create a print queue for it. Macs are Postscript
creatures when networking is involved.

bill

 

[Chris Inacio]

Since the Mac is unix underneath, (I'm a relatively new Mac user, so be
kind if I'll totally off-base....) can't you create a virtual printer
queue using Ghostscript that processes the Postscript into the native
printer's format and sends it to the actual printer, deskjet in this
case. It's done on Linux, FreeBSD, etc. all the time. And Ghostscript
is free.

good luck,
chris

 

[William Smith]

Since the Mac is unix underneath, (I'm a relatively new Mac user, so be
kind if I'll totally off-base....) can't you create a virtual printer
queue using Ghostscript that processes the Postscript into the native
printer's format and sends it to the actual printer, deskjet in this
case. It's done on Linux, FreeBSD, etc. all the time. And Ghostscript
is free.

I won't say this idea won't work but it's not practical for this
scenario.

The user is at home and accessing the TS at the office. RDC will share a
Postscript printer but since the attached printer is a Deskjet, it's
never getting shared by RDC in the first place.

This means the Mac OS would have to be sharing the printer over the
Internet or dial-up connection and the TS would have to be configured
ahead of time with a print queue specifically for this user's IP address
and printer. And we're not even talking about having to forward ports or
consider firewalls and routers yet.

bill

 

[Chris Inacio]

I won't say this idea won't work but it's not practical for this
scenario.

The user is at home and accessing the TS at the office. RDC will share a
Postscript printer but since the attached printer is a Deskjet, it's
never getting shared by RDC in the first place.

This means the Mac OS would have to be sharing the printer over the
Internet or dial-up connection and the TS would have to be configured
ahead of time with a print queue specifically for this user's IP address
and printer. And we're not even talking about having to forward ports or
consider firewalls and routers yet.

bill

Not sure I understand why this would be so problematic. (I'm not
trying to be a jerk here, just trying to eliminate my ignorance....) If
he created a virtual printer on Mac OS using Ghostscript, it would
appear to his Mac as a Postscript printer. Wouldn't RDC just share that
automatically?

If that printer queue is configured to be a Postscript soft RIP for the
deskjet, then most of the heavy lifting will be done locally on his Mac.
The TS machine would still not need to know about the deskjet or the
deskjet driver.

I might try this sometime soon, myself, actually, but I'm busy working
on other things currently, and haven't needed to print over my RDC link
just yet. (If I do, in a pinch, I can switch to using my Windows
machine....) But, hopefully this shouldn't be too complicated.

chris

 

[William Smith]

Not sure I understand why this would be so problematic. (I'm not
trying to be a jerk here, just trying to eliminate my ignorance....) If
he created a virtual printer on Mac OS using Ghostscript, it would
appear to his Mac as a Postscript printer. Wouldn't RDC just share that
automatically?

If that printer queue is configured to be a Postscript soft RIP for the
deskjet, then most of the heavy lifting will be done locally on his Mac.
The TS machine would still not need to know about the deskjet or the
deskjet driver.

I might try this sometime soon, myself, actually, but I'm busy working
on other things currently, and haven't needed to print over my RDC link
just yet. (If I do, in a pinch, I can switch to using my Windows
machine....) But, hopefully this shouldn't be too complicated.

Hi chris!

I hadn't thought of that and it sounds like it's worth a try. I was
putting the Ghostscript on the Windows server rather than on the Mac.
Mac OS X 10.3 comes with Ghostscript built in already so that is better
than free; it's already there!

Although the user hasn't specified his version of Mac OS X, I think this
idea is worth pursuing for others who've asked this same question.

I'll be playing this weekend with this idea.

Thanx! bill