FOOMATIC-PPD-TO-XML(1)

📦 version 4.0.13, in centos-stream 10, centos-stream 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 FOOMATIC-PPD-TO-XML 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this one is a lil utility from the General Commands Manual shelf and it's literally the glow-up machine for your printer setup. it takes a PPD and turns it into Foomatic printer XML. iconic behavior. no cap. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

foomatic-ppd-to-xml — Generate Foomatic printer XML from a PPD

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

foomatic-ppd-to-xml OPTIONS [DRIVER:]PPD [[DRIVER:]PPD ...]

foomatic-ppd-to-xml -h

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so the first form of the foomatic-ppd-to-xml command does the whole main character thing: it creates Foomatic printer XML that corresponds to a given PPD file. slay.

now, if DRIVER is specified, that's the driver your PPD file should get assigned to. if you don't supply it, bestie, it just grabs the first driver from the driver list you handed over via the -d option. 🫶

⚠️ heads up though: PPD files have to go to different drivers, so if you're using more than one PPD, you need to specify drivers. no skipping that part, fr fr.

the second form just prints a help message and dips. bye. 👋

🎀 Options 🎀

  • -d DRIVERS — a comma-separated list of drivers that the printer works with. the first driver is the one your PPD file is for. and unless the -r option says otherwise, that first one is also the recommended driver. drivers you already specified alongside PPDs don't need to be listed here again — no double-dipping. this option is fully unnecessary if you specified drivers for all your PPDs. 💫
  • -r DRIVER — the recommended driver. that's it, that's the whole vibe. ⭐
  • -p PDLS — a comma-separated list of known Page Description Languages (PDLs) that the printer supports. this will add all suitable drivers to the XML entry. currently supported are: Postscript, PCLXL, PCL6, PCL5e, PCL5c, PCL5, and PCL4. 🌈
  • -l — add a link to the PPD file to the driver entry in the XML file. linky link. 🔗
  • -b DIRECTORY — the base directory for a relative link to the PPD. if the base directory is given, the link you set with -l becomes relative to this directory (and not relative to the current directory). and with a base directory given, the PPD can also be given relative to this directory. two-for-one, we love to see it. 💖
  • -D — add only the driver requested by -d and -r to the driver list in the XML file. do not add drivers based on PDLs — not even the PDLs you supplied with the -p option. strict. minimalist. it's giving discipline. 💀
  • -c COMMENT — add the given comment to the comment field of the XML file. comments are in HTML. (yes really, HTML, we don't make the rules 🎀)
  • -C — suppress any default comments (max paper width, pages per minute, automatically generated XML, ...). it does not suppress the comment supplied with -c, so that one's safe. 🙈
  • -f DIRECTORY — the directory in which to write the resulting XML file. the name of the file will be the printer ID with the .xml extension. cute and predictable. ✨
  • -n — do not write modified versions of existing XML files. only create XML files for printers that don't have an XML file yet. if it exists, we leave it alone, we're not touching it, we respect boundaries. 🧚
  • -x — create XML files independent of whether or not there are already XML files for the printers covered by the PPD. this makes the process vastly faster if you have PPD files for printers that are definitely not yet in the Foomatic database. speedrun energy. 🔥

👑 EXIT STATUS 👑

foomatic-ppd-to-xml returns 0 on success, 1 otherwise.

💜 BUGS 💜

None so far. 💅 (we're thriving, apparently)

Please post bug reports on

http://lists.freestandards.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-foomatic

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and generate some XML 🦋💖

— with love from the Foomatic Project, dated 2014-08-21. yes the date is old but she's still serving. periodt. ⭐🎀

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