Printer Printing

This feature allows printers connected to the client to show as virtual printers on the server so that printing can transparently be forwarded back to the client’s printer(s).

This functionality shares most of the code with the file transfers, as the print job is first rendered to a file before being sent to the client.

Installation and platform support

Implementation

How does this work? The xpra client exports the list of local printers to the xpra server, the server can then create the same list of virtual printers using the lpadmin command.
Those virtual printers are actually PDF or postscript scripts.
When the user sends a print job to one of those virtual printers, the script captures the rendered document and forwards it to the client who owns this particular virtual printer. The xpra client then sends this PDF / postscript document straight to the actual printer.

The HTML5 client is written in Javascript so it does not have access to the printer device information and the PDF document is presented for printing via the standard browser’s print dialog.

Debugging

Diagnostics
Issues