ghostscript compile

[harley7@mnsi.net]

On Fri, 03 Jan 2003 21:05:22 -0800
"Net Llama!" <netllama at linux-sxs.org> wrote:

> On 01/03/03 20:31, Joel Hammer wrote:
> > You might find it easier just to get a version of gs which has your
> > driver compiled in it. As I recall, trying to compile gs was beyond
> > me.
> > 
> > Joel
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 09:29:47PM -0500, harley7 at mnsi.net wrote:
> >> I've been trying to get my printer, lexmark 3200, working under
> >> debian. It worked under mandrake before so I know it works with
> >> linux. After much RTFM, I found out the driver for this printer
> >> wasn't compiled into the debian pre-packaged gs. So my question is
> >> how do you compile a driver into gs that doesn't come standard? Has
> >> anyone needed to do this before?
> 
> Agreed.  I remember attempting to help a friend compile a print driver
> in ghostscript about 2 years ago.  I was praying to be thrown into a 
> circle of hell after fighting with it for a few hours.  ghostscript is
> one of those ancient UNIX legacy apps that really needs a massive 
> overhaul.  Its been ported to death and really is utterly frightening
> in its internals.

Well, I got it done. Perhaps I should have RTFMed a bit more before
posting to the list. I found my answers in the README in the source dir
for my driver, and the Make.html and Drivers.html files in the 'doc/'
dir of my ghostscript source tree. At first glance I thought the
Drivers.html file was aimed at developers, but only some of it is. The
README file helped me understand what was in there.

Once I cd'ed into the top level dir of the ghostscript source tree, I
copied my driver source file into 'src/' and added a few lines to
'src/contrib.mak'. Then I ran ./configure and edited the resulting
Makefile, adding one small entry there, then 'make' and 'make install'.

I ran apsfilterconfig and now I have fully functional lexmark 3200
printer, and I now know more about printing than I thought I wanted to.
;-)

Bill