I've read that printer drivers are not supported by Wine. Hence it would not be possible to use windows pdf "printers".
I've just tried to install PDF Factory Pro 4.81 (that I used to use on Windows). It's available here: http://fineprint.com/release/pdf481pro.exe
I somehow managed to get it to install the printing driver. This is how I achieved this:
- install wine-staging (which contains the fix for bug https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24645
- install PDF Factory in a 32bit prefix (otherwise it complains about wrong architecture): WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-PDF /opt/wine-staging/bin/wine /path/to/pdf_factory_setup.exe
I get some errors (which I honestly do not understand):
- psdrv:PSDRV_PPDGetNextTuple Line too long
- psdrv:PSDRV_UpdateDevCaps Can't find page
- psdrv:PSDRV_DeviceCapabilities DC_TRUETYPE: stub
However, the setup completes successfully and the driver is installed. The driver somehow works, because I can open a .txt file in notepad and I can see PDF Factory as an available printer.
Unfortunately I couldn't get any further: if I print to PDF Factory, notepad hangs with 100% cpu usage. In the terminal I see:
Code: Select all
err:psdrv:PSDRV_PPDGetNextTuple Line too long.
err:psdrv:PSDRV_PPDGetNextTuple Line too long.
fixme:psdrv:PSDRV_UpdateDevCaps Can't find page
fixme:psdrv:PSDRV_UpdateDevCaps Can't find page
fixme:psdrv:PSDRV_UpdateDevCaps Can't find page
fixme:psdrv:PSDRV_UpdateDevCaps Can't find page
fixme:winspool:SetJobW Ignoring everything other than document titleI think PDF printing software would be very useful, because apparently Linux equivalents are quite basic and don't provide the functionality of the windows counterparts. For example, with PDF Factory you can merge two print jobs in a single pdf, you can delete single pages, delete part of the page content, move the page content, type text onto the page, embed fonts, encrypt the pdf, create bookmarks, apply default viewing modes (e.g. continuous scrolling, fit zoom to width, etc), set pdf metadata, and so on. And all of this with a convenient GUI.
Also, I'd like to ask if this is on the to-do list of the devs.
Also, out of curiosity, I wonder if the pdf printer (whenever it will work) will be available to Linux native applications or it will be available only to Wine programs.
Thanks.
