NAME Printer.pm

low-level, platform independent printing (curently Linux and 
MS Win32. other UNIXES should also work.)

SYNOPSIS

    use Printer;
    
    $prn = new Printer('linux' => 'lp',
		       'MSWin32' => 'LPT1');

    @available_printers = $prn->list_printers;

    $prn->use_default;


    $prn->print($data);

DESCRIPTION A low-level cross-platform interface to system printers.

This module is intended to allow perl programs to use and query
printers on any computer system capable of running perl. The
intention of this module is for a program to be able to use the
printer without having to know which operating system is being
used.

PLATFORMS

This code has been tested on Linux, windows 95 and windows NT4. 

I've added possible UNIX support, using the Linux routines. This
assumes that your print command is lpr, your queue list command is
lpq and that your printer names can be found by grepping
/etc/printcap. If it's anything different, email me with the value
of $OSNAME or $^O and the corrections.

USAGE

Open a printer handle

$printer = new Printer('osname' => 'printer port');
$printer = new Printer('MSWin32' => 'LPT1', 'Linux' => 'lp');

This method takes a hash to set the printer
name to be used for each operating system that this module is to
be used on (the hash keys are the values of $^O or $OSNAME for
each platform) and returns a printer handle which 
is used by the other methods.

Select the default printer

$printer->use_default;

=head3 Linux

The default printer is read from the environment variables 
$PRINTER, $LPDEST, $NPRINTER, $NGPRINTER in that order, or is set to
"lp" if these variables are not defined. 

=head3 Win32

THe default printer is read from the registry (trust me, this works).

List available printers

%hash = $printer->list_printers.

This returns a hash of arrays listing all available printers. 
The hash keys are:

=over 4

=item * %hash{names} - printer names

=item * %hash{ports} - printer ports

=back

Print

$printer->print($data);

Print a scalar value onto the print server through a pipe (like Linux)

List queued jobs

@jobs = $printer->list_jobs;

=head3 Linux

Each cell of the array returned is an entire line from the
system's lpq command.

=head3 Windows

The array returned is empty (for compatibility).

=head3 Warning

This method will probably return a hash in future when I've
figured out how to access the print queue on windows. 

BUGS

List_jobs needs writing for win32

AUTHOR Stephen Patterson <s.patterson@freeuk.com>

TODO

Make printer name a $OSNAME keyed hash.
Make list_queue work on windows.