printbill - print filter front-end to printbilld

"printbill--type<foo>[--printbill_secondary<bar1>] [--printbill_printer <bar2>]

printbill is the front-end to printbilld(1), the printbill daemon which actually performs billing/accounting/quote generation. It is designed to be called by lprng via the as=blah option in the printcap(5) file. It accepts the standard default command-line options presented to it by lprng, as well as several additional options which modify its behaviour. These parameters are then sent to printbilld(1) via a Unix-domain socket, as a semicolon-delimited list terminated by a newline.

The script attempts to open a connection, and read a version string from the server. If this matches the version number wired into printbill(1), the command-line parameters passed to printbill(1) from lprng are then sent to printbilld(1) via a Unix-domain socket, as a semicolon-delimited list terminated by a newline. printbilld(1) should then perform the specified operation, and return JSUCC (0) or JREMOVE (3) to the printbill(1) script depending on the results of the operation.

The printcap(5) file should have a pair of lines which look like this:

:achk=true :as=|/usr/sbin/printbill --type foo

foo can be --bill (pre-printing billing), in which case --printbill_secondary <printer> must also be present in the command line, --lazybill for lazy print billing (post-printing billing), --account (no billing, only accounting) or --quote, in which case --printbill_printer <printer> can also be specified (but <printer> can be the same as the print queue itself if you want - you can make it different so you can have a printer called "bill" and a quote-queue called "quote" which quotes for "bill". printbill --type quote calculates the bill and sends an e-mail/winpopup message containing the results back to the user.

If you wish to use --bill, you should have something more like this:

lp|Laser printer (scheduler queue - print to this) :lp=/dev/null :achk=true :as=|/usr/sbin/printbill --type bill --printbill_secondary real :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp

real|Laser printer (real queue - you can't print to this) :lp=/dev/lp0 :achk=true :as=|/usr/sbin/printbill_printer :if=.... (if you need an input filter, e.g. PS -> PCL) :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp_real :mx#0 :sh

You could add this too, to generate quotes:

quote|Quote generator for laser printer :lp=/dev/null :achk=true :as=|/usr/sbin/printbill --type quote --printbill_printer lp :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp

Please consult printbill(8) for a more detailed description of how this works. Note that printbilld(1) must be running before this print filter will work.

--type bill|lazybill|account|quote

causes printbilld(1) to do different things - refer to printbilld(1) for details.

--printbill_secondary <printer>

specifies the secondary printer if --type is "bill".

--printbill_printer <printer>

specifies the actual printer we are generating quotes for if --type is "quote". If not specified, it defaults to the default settings (naturally).

-j <jobnum>

specifies the job number (automatically sent by lprng).

-H hostname

specifies the hostname where the job originated (automatically sent by lprng).

-n <name>

specifies the username for this job (automatically sent by lprng).

-P <printer>

specifies the name of the print queue (automatically sent by lprng).

-k <filename>

specifies the control file name (automatically sent by lprng).

-d <directory>

specifies the spool directory for this queue (automatically sent by lprng).

Please see the accompanying README file for installation instructions. Chances are if you're reading this it's correctly installed.

printbill and the accompanying utilities were written by Daniel Franklin (d.franklin@ieee.org). The web interface was written by Phil Ciufo (phil@snrc.uow.edu.au).

You can always grab the latest and greatest version from http://ieee.uow.edu.au/~daniel/software/printbill

printbill(8), printbilld(1), printbill_configure(8), printbill_grapher(1), percentblack(1), percentcolour(1), percent_cmy(1), pqcheck(1), printquote(1), printbill_printer(1), printbillrc(5), printcap(5), pqm(8).