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Braille Printer Application

brf-printer-app implements printing for a variety of common Braille printers connected via network or USB. Features include:

  • A single executable handles spooling, status, and server functionality.
  • Multiple printer support.
  • Each printer implements an IPP Everywhere™ print service and is compatible with the driverless printing support in Linux®.
  • Each printer can directly print "raw", pdf,ubrl files.

Note: Please use the Github issue tracker to report issues or request features/improvements in brf-printer-app:

https://github.com/michaelrsweet/hp-printer-app/issues

Requirements

brf-printer-app depends on:

  • A POSIX-compliant "make" program (both GNU and BSD make are known to work),
  • A C99 compiler (both Clang and GCC are known to work),
  • PAPPL 1.1 or later.
  • CUPS 2.2 or later (for libcups).
  • CUPS-FILTER 1.28.16 or later.

Installing

To install brf-printer-app from source, you'll need a "make" program, a C99 compiler (Clang and GCC work), the CUPS developer files, and the PAPPL developer files. Once the prerequisites are installed on your system, use the following commands to install brf-printer-app to "/usr/local/bin":

make
sudo make install

You can change the destination directory by setting the prefix variable on the second command, for example:

sudo make prefix=/opt/brf-printer-app install

Basic Usage

brf-printer-app uses a single executable to perform all functions. The normal syntax is:

brf-printer-app SUB-COMMAND [OPTIONS] [FILES]

where "SUB-COMMAND" is one of the following:

  • "add": Add a printer
  • "cancel": Cancel one or more jobs
  • "default": Get or set the default printer
  • "delete": Delete a printer
  • "devices": List available printers
  • "drivers": List available drivers
  • "jobs": List queued jobs
  • "modify": Modify a printer
  • "options": Lists the supported options and values
  • "printers": List added printer queues
  • "server": Run in server mode
  • "shutdown": Shutdown a running server
  • "status": Show server or printer status
  • "submit": Submit one or more files for printing

You can omit the sub-command if you just want to print something, for example:

brf-printer-app somefile.brf

The options vary based on the sub-command, but most commands support "-d" to specify a printer and "-o" to specify a named option with a value, for example:

  • brf-printer-app -d myprinter somefile.brf: Print a file to the printer named "myprinter".
  • brf-printer-app -o media=na_letter_8.5x11in picture.brf: Print a media to a US letter sheet.
  • brf-printer-app default -d myprinter: Set "myprinter" as the default printer.

See the brf-printer-app man page for more examples.

Running the Server

Normally you'll run brf-printer-app in the background as a service for your printer(s), using the systemd service file:

sudo systemctl enable brf-printer-app.service
sudo systemctl start brf-printer-app.service

You can start it in the foreground with the following command:

sudo brf-printer-app server -o log-file=- -o log-level=debug

Root access is needed on Linux when talking to USB printers, otherwise you can run brf-printer-app without the "sudo" on the front.

Supported Printers

The following printers are currently supported:

  • Generic Braille embosser.

Legal Stuff

The Braille Printer Application is Copyright © 2024 by Arun Patwa. Some of the reference has been taken from (https://github.com/chandresh-soni/Braille-printer-app) which is copyright © 2022 by Chandresh Soni. and also from pappl-retrofit.(https://github.com/OpenPrinting/pappl-retrofit) which is Copyright © 2022 by openprinting.

Filter used to convert various file format are in cups-filter is Copyright © 2022 by Samuel Thibault ([email protected]).

It is derived from the HP PCL Printer Application, a first working model of a raster Printer Application using PAPPL. It is available here:

https://github.com/michaelrsweet/hp-printer-apps

The HP PCL Printer Application is Copyright © 2019-2020 by Michael R Sweet.

This software is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. See the files "LICENSE" and "NOTICE" for more information.