this is not hard, computer

[zwol]

I have a new printer. It's a higher end HP beast, which means it goes on the network and to print stuff on it you just throw PostScript at it on TCP port 9100. This is easy. Yet somehow the computer can't or won't do it. I'm almost certain the problem is the computer's working too hard. Despite my having selected "LaserJet 4000 (Postscript)" in the big list of printers, it doesn't realize it's got a nice sensible printer that can just have PostScript thrown at it. It thinks it needs to do all sorts of horrible preprocessing first, and so what it ends up throwing at port 9100 is not what it ought. (I know it's throwing something at port 9100. tcpdump says so.)

Of course, I'm not at all certain I have set up the wizzywig printer configuration dealie correctly, or the print spooler itself, or the giant pile of PPDs that it appears to use internally, or anything like that. I mean, there are like ten different (Debian) packages that seem to be relevant, but I probably only need two or three of them, but I am not at all sure which two. Also the flood of error messages I get when I start the aforementioned wizzywig printer configuration dealie is not confidence-inspiring. Nor is the flood of error messages in the print spooler's logfiles (none of which, however, appear to be relevant; it reads like "hey! there was a typo in the package post-install script so one of my config files, which I do not actually need, is missing, so I'm going to complain about it at 30 second intervals until you shut me off!").