How to print to USB printer from embedded ARM board?

[Kevin Cozens]

Greetings.

I have been approached about helping on a project that is running Linux on an 
Embedded ARM board (a TS-7250). The application being run on the board needs 
to be able use a printer connected via USB. The idea is to not be tied to one 
specific printer.

The board comes standard with 32MB SDRAM and 32MB Flash disk and is optionally 
available with up to 64MB SDRAM and 128MB Flash disk. The board also supports 
USB Flash drives.

I'm going to be checking what is provided with the stock demo Linux distro 
that comes with the board (TS-Linux) as well as the Debian distro that is also 
available for the board to see what (if any) printing related packages may 
already be included in the two distros.

The easiest way to provide support for printing some text and some line graphs 
would be for the program to generate Postscript code and pass that to a 
typical Linux printing system based on lpr (or an lpr variant) or even CUPS 
along Ghostscript and (possibly) a2ps.

This brings to mind several questions.

Does anyone happen to have a general idea how much disk space an Lpr/CUPS with 
Ghostscript printing system would need? I don't need to support all printers 
at once. The packages could be stripped down so that only one printer is 
supported at any given time. Similarly with fonts as only a few of the basic 
ones would be made available.

How much memory might be required by the printing process to (mainly for 
Ghostscript) while generating the data to be sent to the attached printer from 
the passed Postscript code?

Any recommendations as to printing system to use (lpr, GNUlpr, LprNG, cups)?

Are there pre-compiled packages of lpr (& c.), Ghostscript, etc. already out 
there for ARM? (It would save me cross-compiling).

Are there any other thoughts or concerns I should be considering that I might 
have overlooked?

I'm still doing my own investigation regarding the project. I just thought I 
would tap in to the minds and experiences of the other members of TLUG before 
I agree to work on the project.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

-- 
Cheers!

Kevin.

http://www.ve3syb.ca/           |"What are we going to do today, Borg?"
Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172      |"Same thing we always do, Pinkutus:
                                 |  Try to assimilate the world!"
#include <disclaimer/favourite> |              -Pinkutus & the Borg
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