Adding a PDF Printer to Ubuntu 9.10

OpenOffice.org has a plugin to allow you to export as a PDF. Mozilla Firefox even seems to be able to save pages as a PDF. However, for some strange reason Mozilla Thunderbird does not have this feature. I recently encountered this issue when I desired to save some email as PDF files. I use PDFs as an archive method, partly because there is no support for printer and partly because I love having a digital archive.

So to enable all programs to have the ability to print to PDF, we need to add a PDF printer. To do this, there are two steps we will need to do: 1) install cups-pdf and 2) setup the printer.

Install cups-pdf

First thing you will need to do is install cups-pdf. Open the synaptic package manager (System >Adminstration >Synaptic Package Manager). Enter your password when prompted. Type cups-pdf in the Quick Search box at the top of the window. Left click the checkbox in front of cups-pdf in the list of results and choose Mark for Installation. Click Apply and install cups-pdf.

Cups PDF allows for the ability to setup a virtual printer through Cups, a standards-based open source printing system. Depending on what you already have installed on your system, installing cups-pdf might require other software, including cups to be installed.

Setting up the PDF Printer

Now that we have the virtual printer installed and ready to be used, we need to add it to the list of available printers. To do this, open the Printer configuration window (System >Administration >Printing). Click the new icon. In the left side of the window, under Devices should appear "Generic CUPS-PDF Printer". Click Forward. Click Apply.

When prompted "Would you like to print a test page?", choose either yes or not. You are not required to click yes, however doing so will create a test page and output it as a PDF file. This and further files created using cups-pdf will be outputted in the PDF folder under your home directory.

The output directory can be modified to place the PDF files into another location however there is no graphical way to do this. It seems that several files will need to be changed to allow for this, so I will leave well enough alone and allow all my PDF files to be placed in the PDF folder under my home directory.

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