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edm
Asked: 2012-04-05 05:50:59 +0800 CST

How can I set 'Print to File' as my default printing option?

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At the moment when I print, my Deskjet-3050 is selected as the default printer.

I would like 'Print to File' to be the default 'printer' without using cups-pdf

I specifically do not want to use cups-pdf because of the way it renders text (see below). I am not entirely sure what it is doing but it seems as though it renders the text as bitmaps and embeds them in pdf (as I am not able to highlight/copy/search embedded text as I am using a standard Print to File pdf).

enter image description here

N.B. this is not a dupe of: Can I make PDF the default for 'print to file'

printing

4 Answers

  1. Stop cupsd by running

    sudo stop cups

    Then edit /etc/cups/printers.conf with your favourite editor.

    Find the line that says

    <DefaultPrinter somename>

    And change it to 

    <Printer somename>

    Then start cupsd with

    sudo start cups

    And that should remove the default printer thus reverting print to file as the default.

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  2. You're probably going to need to print to Ghostscript to arrange everything, then use something like PDFTK to actually get the data that you want merged.

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  3. are you sure thats not dependent on the source doc ....its like that for everything ??? that is so weird .... the best way to print is in 2 steps pdfs in my humble opinion should always run through a post script like ghostscript is my fav before being outputted to file ...I mean really whats an extra second if your actually going to need to read the doc

    try this it should help you set up the print process
    http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/05/17/5-steps-to-create-a-pdf-printer-print-to-pdf-in-ubuntu/

    cups is lame i agree

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  4. According to Matt Cutts, you can also set a variable in your .bashrc

    export PRINTER=printer-name

    Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/change-default-printer-linux-firefox/

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