Default paper size for new printers

arizonagroovejet · 10-23-2009, 09:29 AM

Using SLED 11 (basically openSUSE 11.1 with different branding), if I set up a new printer the paper size is set to Letter. This is irritating because I live somewhere we don't use Letter, we use A4. I am unable to figure out how to make new printers default to A4.

The only place I can find where a default paper size is defined is

Code:

me@foo:~> cat /etc/papersize 
a4

and that as you can see already says A4. I've found references to CUPS setting the default paper size based upon the locale, but my locale is, far as I can tell, set to en_GB.

Code:

me@foo:~> env | grep LANG
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
GDM_LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
me@foo:~> grep LANG /etc/sysconfig/language  | grep -v ^#
RC_LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
ROOT_USES_LANG="ctype"
INSTALLED_LANGUAGES="en_GB"

Which to my mind means that if CUPS does look at the locale, it should be getting A4. I also tried looking at some of the drivers to see if they specify a default page size. Earlier on today I set up a HP LaserJet 1200 and it defaulted to Letter paper. If I look at the driver I find:

Code:

me@foo:~> zgrep DefaultPageSize /usr/share/cups/model/manufacturer-PPDs/hp/HP_LaserJet_1200.ppd.gz 
*DefaultPageSize: A4
me@foo:~> zgrep DefaultPageSize /usr/share/cups/model/manufacturer-PPDs/hplip/HP_LaserJet_1200-ps.ppd.gz
*DefaultPageSize: A4

Despite all this, CUPS still sets up new printers to use Letter paper by default. Anyway know how to get CUPS to set up a new printer to use A4 by default?

neonsignal · 10-23-2009, 10:36 PM

Quote:

This is irritating because I live somewhere we don't use Letter, we use A4.

Yep, annoying.

Not sure I can be much help, but for what it is worth:

An application to look at is paperconf from the libpaper-utils. However, it just works with the environment variables PAPERCONF and PAPERSIZE, and /etc/papersize.

You can show the current locale paper size by:

Code:

locale LC_PAPER

You can override the locale paper size (though you shouldn't need to for your locale), by setting LC_PAPER="POSIX" (eg in /etc/environment).

Apparently the new CUPS version (1.4) will have a way of setting a default paper size to override these.