Spurious %%EndDocument in CUPS printing
When Quikscript is used on many Linux and other Unix-based systems that use CUPS spooling, the final page can be corrupted with additional text %%EndDocument and %%EOF placed at the end. The problem has occurred since version 1.2.0 of CUPS was released. This unwanted text is inserted into the stream of text being sent to the printer by CUPS itself. While it will not cause any harm in general to a PostScript file which is directly interpreted, it will corrupt the output in any job relying on the PostScript operator "readline" to process the text that follows.

All PostScript programs that use "readline" to process the following data up to end of file will be affected by this CUPS behaviour. The symptoms depend on what processing the program performs on the input. Some programs will cause the unwanted text to be printed on the page. Others may omit to print the final page.

The developers of CUPS are unwilling to change its behaviour, which is most unfortunate. It means that this class of PostScript program can be printed from any environment except for one running CUPS. To get around the problem, Quikscript has been modified to deal with it. The processing of input will cease if a line is read which commences with %%EndDocument. It is hoped that this string does not occur in normal documents, and if it does, that the text is not placed at the start of a line.

< < Back to the Quikscript home page