Thursday, November 22, 2007

How do I get the kde printer dialogue box in soffice

I don't so much like linux, what I really like is kde. To some extent wouldnt mind if I had to switch OS to BSD or Hurd, or whatever, it is the consistent userinterface of KDE that I am most attached to.. Anyway it annoys me when I have to use applications that are not integrated with KDE. Sometimes I have to use Mozilla (yuk!) instead of konqueror for non-standard compliant web sites (ARE YOU LISTENING BLOGGER.COM I SAID NON-STANDARD!)and then you get that yukky mozilla file dialogue box to save files. Anyway I digress. OpenOffice on my Mandriva 2006 laptop is not KDE integrated, and it is ok picking up the local printer, but sometimes, especially as I use it on different networks, it is handy to go to the KDE print dialoge, which can see more printers (eg from a remote cups server).

Anyway the way to do it is with a little tool called spadmin that lets you setup kprinter as though it was another pdf converter. Full instructions for example are
here

Same trick could be adapted for your other non-standard print needs. Some network printers have a charming feature that they postscript files you just ftp to them, often a handy way to bypass those irritating printer queues.... maybe something like

ncftpput -c myprinteripaddress