Foomatic

Foomatic is a configurable printing filter. It uses PPD files as configuration to generate appropriate output for a given printer. It is spooler independent which means it can be used with Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), LPRng and others. It uses Ghostscript in the background, using options according to the PPD file of the printer. Currently it is developed by the OpenPrinting workgroup of the Linux Foundation.

Like CUPS, foomatic supposes that applications will produce output in PostScript. If the output spools to a PostScript printer, no further action is needed. Otherwise, the most generic way to act is:

But if foomatic-rip "knows" about the available printer, it will translate the PostScript data directly to the printer's language, without creating the intermediate raster file.

The components of the package are:

The following free drivers were specifically developed to work with foomatic:

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