Bug 152470

Summary:	a2ps when printing HTML: "sh: netscape not found"
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Ulrich Windl <Ulrich.Windl>
Component:	Printing	Assignee:	Dr. Werner Fink <werner>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Johannes Meixner <jsmeix>
Severity:	Minor
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Beta 3
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i586
OS:	SuSE Linux 10.1
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Ulrich Windl 2006-02-21 13:17:49 UTC

When trying to print HTML using a2ps-4.13-1051, the following messages appears:
sh: netscape: command not found
[file.html (html, delegated to Netscape): failed  Ignored]
[No output produced]

Either there should be a dependency for Netscape (less desirable), or an alternate method for printing HTML should be used.

Comment 1 Johannes Meixner 2006-02-21 14:05:21 UTC

I reproduced it with Suse Linux 10.1 beta3
default packages installed (a2ps-4.13-1063):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# a2ps -1 -o /tmp/a2ps.out /usr/share/doc/packages/ghostscript/doc/News.htm
sh: netscape: command not found
[/usr/share/doc/packages/ghostscript/doc/News.htm
  (html, delegated to Netscape): failed.  Ignored]
[No output produced]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Therefore I changed the product from 9.2 to 10.1

The reason is that delegation to netscape is defined in /etc/a2ps.cfg

Normally HTML is printed via a browser or directly via CUPS
and then the browser or CUPS produce PostScript.
Therefore only a minor bug.

A hard RPM requirement for netscape is not possible because a2ps
works without netscape (e.g. for plain text) and furthermore
netscape is outdated.

Werner,
do you know if an alternate method can be used by default
to convert HTML to PostScript via a2ps?
I.e. using a tool which is installed by default (for example html2ps
cannot be used because it is not installed by default).

But w3m seems to be installed by default and it can be used
to convert HTML to plain text which can then converted by a2ps:

w3m -dump /usr/share/doc/packages/ghostscript/doc/News.htm | a2ps ...

Comment 2 Johannes Meixner 2006-02-21 14:14:07 UTC

Correction:
CUPS cannot convert HTML to PostScript.
There is no CUPS filter for HTML->PostScript in /usr/lib[64]/filter/.
CUPS prints HTML files as plain text, see "text/html" in /etc/cups/mime.convs.

Comment 3 Dr. Werner Fink 2006-02-23 12:40:26 UTC

I'm now using:

  ########## HTML files
  # Pass HTML to w3m, hoping that there is an installed w3m...
  Delegation: w3m html:ps \
    ${W3M:-w3m} -dump '$f' | #{del.a2ps}

this does the job.

Comment 4 Dr. Werner Fink 2006-02-23 12:40:55 UTC

fixed