- an inquisitive soul recently posited a question
regarding printing for the IT... there are a few solutions, including a video showing someone printing via CUPS directly off the IT, printing via PB's KDE port, and (i thought) one approach possibly using FTP...

- but my simple solution uses a software package readily available for the IT... dunno why i didn't think about this earlier... it's nothing special, really... the catch is that you need a *nix box already configured for printing and an available user account on the box (i use a notebook running Ubuntu)...

- the incantation uses a shell command line pipe and ssh, with lpr on the receiving end... i tested .txt, .gif, .pdf, .jpg and all worked well (CUPS configuration)...

#!/bin/sh
# nPrint - print file from command line using remote host/acct
#
cat $1 | ssh $2 '( lpr )'

- for example:

nPrint foo.jpeg willie@192.168.1.101

or

nPrint foo.txt varnell@foobar.net

- note you can 'hardwire' the user/host if you like by substituting the $2 with username and IP/hostname... if you have not set up ssh key exchange, you'll be prompted for the remote user's password... (or you can just create a 'print' user on the remote system)

- now if someone would come up with a gui file chooser, we'd have printing of files off the IT's desktop menu!

:-)

- hope this helps someone print from the IT...

p.s. and i'm very sorry 770 users; this will work for you too... i'm abashed at how i callously forgot our vanguard IT owners...