PaperCut conversion for WebPrint & Libre/Open Office formats?

[pete]

Morning,

 

I'm building a sandboxed webprint server and wondered if I can get PaperCut to support formats that the server knows about, or if I have to (can?) rely on Word plugins for something similar:

 

If I install LibreOffice on the webprint sandbox server, will PaperCut pick up on that and use it?

 

Or...if I install a word plugin to support LibreOffice* formats, will it try using that?

 

I suspect the answer is "nope, doesn't work" or there'd be something on PaperCut's KB about it, but....

 

cheers

 

(yes, I could make them all convert to PDF, but if I can get around that I'd like to).

[Tim_at_PaperCut]

Hi Pete,

 

You're absolutely correct unfortunately - in terms of formats supported in Web Print, the full list is shown here: Web Print (Driver-less printing via a web browser) but at the moment LibreOffice formats aren't supported.

 

Things are always work-in-progress however, so I've added a 'vote' to our internal ticket for looking into the possibility of supporting those formats (as well as e.g. .png / .gif / .jpg etc) in a future version of PaperCut.

 

Sorry that there's not a more immediate workaround for that!

[pete]

Cheers @Tim_at_PaperCut ,

 

Yup, a couple of people have already moaned about the image support.

 

While you're adding to the wishlist, what I'd like is something along the lines of:

 

1) Install software package on webprint machine. Make sure the webprint user can print files from that software package.

2) Add the extension for that file type to a list of admin-approved formats in the PaperCut admin interface.

3) User can upload new approved format and webprint uses the default program on the webprint machine to handle opening and printing.

 

I'm assuming you're merely doing an "check hot folder, open file, send to print, delete from hot folder", rather than converting to postscript or anything fancy before you send it off to the print queue.

[Tim_at_PaperCut]

@pete, thanks! Yep, will get this added. We basically need a 'handler' which uses the API for Office (in the case of Office docs) to do the equivalent of opening up the document and pressing print, but it actually does it at an API level - so it's not identical to how a user would print the document. This also has other implications - for example if you install e.g. Word Viewer on the web print sandbox, the handler won't work because it needs the Office APIs only available with the full Word/Office install.

 

Hopefully we can build out additional handlers for other file-types, and I'll add your notes above too, to see if there's a way that we can auto-handle new filetypes if there's an app on the machine that can handle that particular filetype. No harm in asking : )