# The Add Printer Wizard for &CUPS;

Clicking on the most leftward icon of the toolbar in the upper part of the window starts the Add Printer Wizard).

This wizard steps you through various screens to install a new printer. At present this Wizard works for &CUPS; and the RLPR environment module. The number of steps depend on the actual print-subsystem which is active for you on your box.

## Starting

The welcome screen tells you that you can go back any time to change a setting.

The &kdeprint; wizard introduction screen
The introduction screen of the printer wizard

## Backend Selection

Choose the backend protocol &CUPS; is supposed to use with your new printer. There are:

- local printer (serial, parallel, USB)

- remote LPD queue

- SMB shared printer (&Windows;)

- Network Printer (TCP, &HP; JetDirect, AppSocket)

- Network printer with &IPP; (&IPP;/HTTP)

- File printer

- serial fax /modem printer

- Class of Printers

If some choices are grayed out, they are not available. For example, maybe you have no fax backend software or no modem installed to use this.

Choosing your Printer system
Choosing your Printer System

## Direct Network Setting

The contents of your next screen is dependent on your choice in the previous screen. If you know the details, just type them in to configure your network settings directly.

In other cases the wizard can scan the network for you to help you decide which setting could be useful.

&kdeprint; wizard network scan
In the &kdeprint; wizard, you can enter network details directly, or you can scan the network automatically

## Information Retrieval by Scanning the Network

If you use one of the network connections (remote LPD, SMB, remote &CUPS;, network printer with &IPP;), you have an option for scanning the net. Be careful when applying this; in some environments network scanning is considered a hostile and harmful act!

In the case of SMB, &kdeprint; will use the Samba utilities `nmblookup` and `smbclient` (which need to be installed for this to work) to retrieve the information it presents in a tree structure.

In the case of &IPP; (Port 631) and TCP Network/AppSocket (Port 9100) &kdeprint; will try to open the port and in case of success send an `ipp-get-printer-attribute` request to the printer. For newer &HP; printers the latter usually works, because they support both AppSocket and &IPP;.

Some printers or manufacturers use other port numbers for direct TCP/IP printing. You may need to look up which one to use. The Settings button in the dialog lets you configure your scan, including IP addresses, ports and timeout to use.

Once again: be careful not to be misunderstood as an intruder to your network, if you use the scanning technique.

&kdeprint; wizard network configuration dialog
In the &kdeprint; wizard, you can enter parameters to have the wizard scan parts of your network.

## Printer Model Selection

The hardest part probably is the Printer Model Selection. In former years the situation was difficult, because there were hardly any drivers to find. Now it is, because there are too many, with some of them very good, but many quite broken.

If you have a current database of available drivers on your system, select the manufacturer in the left part of the window first, then the device model in the right part. This split window shows all &PPD;s found by &CUPS; in its standard repository of installable &PPD;s. This repository normally is `/usr/share/cups/model/`. If you want your driver found automatically by &CUPS; and &kdeprint;, throw it in there.

## Driver Selection

On the next screen you will see a description of the driver selected previously. This description is extracted from the actual &PPD; used.

For a real &PostScript; printer never try to install a Foomatic or Gimp-Print &PPD;, even if it is offered. You won't be happy with it. Instead find the original &PPD; from the manufacturer, preferably the one written for &Windows; NT and use it.

Some &Linux; distributions have supplied for &CUPS; every possible combination of ghostscript filters and foomatic &PPD; files they could find on the net, Many of those are quite useless; they were generated a year ago, when the folks at www.linuxprinting.org made their first experiments with suppying third party &PPD;s for &CUPS;. Although dubbed Alpha at the time, these started to take a life of their own and can now be found at various places on the net, doing &CUPS; no favours.

If you are not sure which ones to use go to:

- http://www.linuxprinting.org

- http://www.cups.org

And ask for help. At a later stage a document detailing the differences of the different driver and &PPD; models will appear at http://kdeprint.sourceforge.net/ Watch out for this!

Via the Other... button you are able to retrieve any &PPD; located somewhere on your available file system.

## Printer Test and Finding the Right Settings

Do your first driver settings now. The most important one is the default paper size. This is in many cases set ot Letter. If you are at home in an A4 country and don't want yout first test page to jam: now is the time to prevent this.

You are ready to start a test print. Hit the Test button.

## Banner Selection

The last but one screen lets you select, if and which banners you want to use to mark the beginning and/or end of every printjob on that printer. You can also select and deselect banners before printing in the job options dialogs.

If you need to use custom banners, copy them into `/usr/share/cups/banners/` to make them available for selection. They must be &PostScript; files however.

## Finally: Baptizing Your New Printer

The last screen lets you insert a name for your new printer.

The name must start with a letter and may contain numbers and underscores with a maximum size of 128 characters. Stick to it if you want to avoid erratic behaviour of your &CUPS; daemon. The printer names in &CUPS; are not case sensitive! This is a requirement of &IPP;. So the names DANKA_infotec, Danka_Infotec and danka_infotec all represent the same printer.

## The Final Confirmation Screen