In the digital world it seems like we’re always having to convert paper documents into a digital format. Whether it’s scanning old pictures to save as digital images or scanning important documents to save in PDF format, a scanner has almost become a necessity for any home workstation. Ubuntu provides the XSane application to interface with most of the scanners available. This section walks through the things you’ll need to know to get the most out of your scanner and Ubuntu.



Detecting the Scanner
Before you can start using your scanner you need to ensure that XSane can work with it. Here are the steps to do that:

1. Connect your scanner to your Ubuntu workstation, then turn on the scanner.

2. After starting Ubuntu and logging in to your desktop, start XSane by selecting
Applications -> Graphics -> XSane Image Scanner. The XSane splash screen appears, allowing you to select the scanner.

The opening splash screen displays a list of the scanners XSane detects that are connected to the system, along with a default scanner.

3. Select your scanner, if it has been automatically detected.

4. The XSane workspace opens, with four separate windows We’ll talk more about each of the windows in the XSane workspace a little later.

5. Click the Acquire Preview button in the Preview window. Your scanner should automatically start up and begin scanning the document. When the scanner finishes scanning, the document should appear in the Preview window display area.

If you can see the scanned document in the Preview window display area, you’re ready to start using XSane..



Detecting the scanner is often the hardest part of using XSane. The XSane program is a graphical front end for the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) commandline utility, which detects and interacts with scanners based on a standard interface protocol. Many scanners have interfaces written to interact with SANE, but there are still those that won’t work. Although there are many types of scanners available, they break down into five basic categories, based on how they connect to the workstation:

• Parallel port scanners: Parallel port scanners connect to the LPT1 printer port on a workstation. These scanners are notoriously slow and often use low-resolution scans.

• SCSI scanners: The small computer system interface (SCSI) is a popular interface for older scanners. Some scanners come with their own SCSI card that you must install in the workstation to connect the scanner. The key to using SCSI scanners is that Ubuntu must detect the installed SCSI card. For the more-popular SCSI cards this isn’t a problem, but SCSI cards that often come with older scanners can be an issue.

• IDE scanners: Some older scanners require an integrated device electronics (IDE) connection on the workstation. This is the same type of connection that most hard drives and CD drives use. If your scanner connects directly to the IDE port on your workstation, you may have to purchase a separate IDE card to support it.

• USB scanners: Most modern scanners connect to the workstation using a standard universal serial bus (USB) port. Ubuntu automatically attempts to detect USB devices connected to the workstation, and it often configures the scanner as a USB device before SANE even starts.

• Network scanners: Network scanners use proprietary software on Windows workstations to detect and connect to a scanner across the network. The Windows software used for this connection usually doesn’t have a Linux counterpart. SANE has its own network protocol for sharing a scanner connected to a workstation on the network with other workstations, but it can’t connect to network scanners that use a proprietary protocol.

The best source for SANE scanner information is the SANE Project web site at http://www.sane-project.org. Select the Supported Devices link to search for supported scanners.


Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

You can modify the properties of any printer on the system, whether Ubuntu automatically created it or you manually created it. If you double-click the icon for the printer you want to configure.

The window on the left contains five main properties groups that contain printer information you can modify. The main groups are
• Settings
• Policies
• Access Control
• Printer Options
• Job Options
Some printers contain a sixth group for setting specific options for the printer.



Settings
The Settings group provides some basic settings you can change for the printer. From here, you can change the description and location tags for the printer, the URI of the printer, and the PPD file used for the printer. There are also three other buttons that you can use:

• Print Test Page: Provides an easy way for you to test whether the printer and PPD file are working properly.

• Print Self-Test Page: Some printers support an internal self-test page. If your printer supports that feature, this button will be enabled.

• Clean Print Heads: Some printers support an external command to clean the print heads. If your printer supports that feature, this button will be enabled. That covers the general settings for the printer. The other groups provide more advanced settings.



Policies
The Policies group contains three separate sections. The State section allows you to control the state of the printer:
• Enabled: Lets you take the printer offline if there’s a problem.
• Accepting Jobs: Allows you to temporarily suspend processing print jobs.
• Shared: Allows you to set whether the printer is a shared resource on the network.

There are four policies (or rules) that control printer behavior. Two of the policies control banner pages for print jobs; the other two control how the printer operates.

There are two operation policies that you can set:

• Error Policy: Determines how the printer reacts to an error in the printing process.
The choices are Abort-Job (giving up on printing the job), Retry-Job (trying again after manual intervention), or Stop-Printer (preventing all other print jobs from printing). The default value is to retry the job because the problem most likely can be resolved with an easy fix, such as turning the printer on or setting it as online.

• Operation Policy: Determines the mode the printer runs in. At this time, the only setting is default.

Banner pages allow you to print a special page describing the print job. The Starting Banner page prints out before the print job. This option allows you to print a cover sheet for the print job. Theoretically, it’s supposed to provide some privacy, blocking people from seeing the first print page on the printer, but, really, who wouldn’t just look under the banner page? There are several banner pages you can choose from.

The Ending Banner page allows you to print a page that signifies the end of the print job. If you’re in a high-volume printing environment, using a starting or ending banner helps keep everyone’s print jobs separate. In a workstation environment, it’s pretty much a waste of paper. The default is to not print either of the banner pages.



Access Control
The Access Control group provides a method for you to restrict access to the printer. There are two ways to do this. First, you can list every user account that the server will prevent from using the printer. This option means that any user not on the list can print and that any user on the list can’t print.

The second method is to list the user accounts that are allowed to use the printer. This option means that only the users on the list can print. Obviously, which method you choose depends on whether you have more people you want to allow to print or to restrict from printing.

Be careful when setting this feature. Notice how the two radio buttons are labeled:
• Allow printing for everyone except these users.
• Deny printing for everyone except these users.

If you click the Allow Printing radio button, the user accounts you list will be denied access to the printer—and vice versa for the Deny Printing radio button. That’s just a bit backward, if you ask me!



Printer Options
The Printer Options group allows you to set some physical properties for the printer. The properties available for you to modify are based on information provided by the individual printer’s PPD file and depend on the physical characteristics of the printer. These properties are divided into separate categories, depending on the printer’s capabilities.

The General settings handle properties such as types of paper the printer can handle,
print qualities it can produce, and number and types of input trays. You can force the
printer server to request a specific paper size for all print jobs or to request which paper
tray to take paper from.
The Printout Mode settings control the default print quality used by the printer. Again,
these settings depend on the capabilities of the particular printer, but usually there’s a
range of dots per inch (dpi) and color settings to choose from.



Job Options
Finally, the Job Options tab allows you to set the default properties for print jobs sent to the printer. When you request an application to send something to the printer, a standard GNOME Print dialog box appears.

You can select several printing properties for the specific print job, such as whether to print in landscape mode, how many copies of the document to print, the paper size to use, and so on. If you prefer to use any of these settings by default, you can set them in the Job Options tab. Many more print job options can be specified. The job options are divided into four sections:

• Common Options: Sets common printer options, such as number of copies, page orientation, and number of printed sides (for duplex printing).

• Image Options: Sets imaging options such as scaling and hue adjustment.

• Text Options: Sets features that affect the printed text, such as characters per inch, lines per inch, and margins.

• Advanced Options: Allows you to set options available for a specific printer. The complete list of options appears within the Printer Configuration Properties window.

If you decide to revert to the default setting for an option, click the Reset button, and the option will return to the default value.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

One amazing feature of Ubuntu is its ability to automatically detect printers connected via USB cables, parallel cables, and even serial cables. If you have one of these printers, you most likely don’t need to add it to the system. You should already see an icon appear under the Printers window. Just move on to the next section to configure it. If you are not fortunate enough to have your printer automatically detected, you’ll have to manually add it. Here are the steps for doing that:

1. Click the New button on the toolbar. The New Printer wizard appears and lists your printer options. Before the New Printer wizard appears, the Printer Configuration tool scans your workstation and the local network for any accessible printers. If it detects any, they’re added to the top of the connection list.

2. Select the connection type of the new printer. Although the printer is defined as a local printer on your workstation, this utility also allows you to configure six types of printer connections (besides the currently connected printers) to make a printer available to the system. As you select each connection type in the left side of the window, a different Properties area appears in the right side. For example, if you select Windows Printer via Samba, text boxes appear where you can enter the printer name, a userID, and a password to access the network printer. Click the Browse button to browse your local network to locate shared printers. After you’ve selected the connection type and changed any Properties settings, click Forward to continue with the wizard.

3. Select the printer manufacturer or the location of the PPD file. Ubuntu uses PostScript printer description (PPD) files to format files for printing. PPD files are based on the same concept as the standard printer drivers you’ve probably used in Microsoft Windows. Each printer must have a PPD installed for CUPS to know how to format text and graphics sent to the printer. This wizard window allows you to select the PPD file to use for the new printer. You have two options:

• Select the printer manufacturer from the list of installed drivers.
• Install your own PPD file for the printer.

If you’re lucky enough to have the PPD file for your printer, copy it to a location on your workstation and select the Provide PPD File option. Browse to the location of the file and select it, then click Forward. If you don’t have the PPD file for your printer, you’ll have to hope that Ubuntu has your specific printer make and model defined in its library. If you find the printer manufacturer listed, select it and click Forward.

4. If you selected a printer manufacturer, the next wizard window provides a list of specific printer models and PPD files. Select the printer model and (optionally) the proper PPD file. This wizard window asks you to select the specific model for your printer. Hopefully, your printer model will be listed. If not, you must go back a step and find your own PPD file to install. If your specific model is listed, select it, and a list of available PPD files is shown. Some models may have only one PPD file, but others may have two or more files to choose from. In that case, one is usually marked as recommended. Try that PPD file first. If it doesn’t work, select a different PPD file. Clicking the Forward button takes you to the final wizard window (some printer drivers also have an optional window, which appears before the final wizard window, for setting individual options).

5. Define a printer name for the printer, and add the optional description and location if you want to include more information about the printer.

6. Click Apply in the Summary window to finish adding the new printer.

The new printer is added as an icon in the Printer Configuration window (even if you mapped to a remote printer). You should now see the new printer when printing from applications on your system. However, before getting too carried away with printing, it’s a good idea to check how the printer is configured.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Even though technology gurus keep predicting a paperless society, for now we’re stuck having to print some things out. In the past, printing was one of the dark areas in Linux. Trying to get modern printers working with Linux was a challenge. However, recently there’ve been some amazing advances that make Linux more printer friendly. Possibly the biggest advance in this area has been the common UNIX printing system (CUPS). CUPS provides a common interface between UNIX (and Linux) systems and printers. It runs in the background as a service, connecting to any defined printers and waiting for applications to send print jobs. Because it runs in the background, CUPS can communicate with remote printers and accept print jobs from them. Ubuntu provides a simple tool to access and set up the CUPS server running on your workstation. The Printer Configuration tool provides a graphical interface to add, configure, and remove printers on your Ubuntu workstation. This section describes how to use the Printer Configuration tool to manage your workstation printers.


The Printer Configuration Tool
The Printer Configuration tool provides an easy way to configure the CUPS server running on the system and any printers you’ve defined. Selecting System -> Administration -> Printing from the desktop menu starts the Ubuntu Printer Configuration tool.

There are two things you can configure from the Printer Configuration window:
• Server settings: Allows you to set features controlling how the CUPS server manages system printing features.
• Local and network printers: Displays icons for all of the printers defined on the system and allows you to change individual printer properties on them.

The following sections describe how to use the Printer Configuration window to set the CUPS and printer properties for your system.


Printer Server Settings
Selecting Server -> Settings from the menu bar in the Printer Configuration window produces the Basic Server Settings window.

There are a few different settings you can play with here to help out with printer administration:

• Show printers shared by other systems: Displays printers found by browsing the network.

• Share published printers connected to this system: Allows local network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow printing from the Internet: Allows remote network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow remote administration: Enables remote clients to connect to the CUPS server running on this system.

• Allow users to cancel any job (not just their own): By default, users can cancel only their own print jobs. Enabling this feature allows any user to cancel any other user’s print job. Although this is a handy feature, it can be dangerous in a multiuser environment (especially if your users like to play tricks on one another).

• Save debugging information for troubleshooting: By default, the CUPS server generates a moderate amount of logging information to monitor printer use or problems. If you’re having trouble with a specific printer configuration, you can enable this feature to produce more (lots more) information in the log files. After determining the settings appropriate for your CUPS server environment, you can add and set up individual local printers.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Emacs for E-Mail
Emacs has been called the Swiss Army knife of GNU/Linux because of all the functions it can perform. Sending and receiving e-mail is another application of Emacs that you may want to use. It is important to note that not all e-mail services support the use of Gnus or Emacs as a mail client. Double-check with your e-mail service to see if they support this before you configure the .gnus file.

If your e-mail service provides support for Emacs and Gnus, let’s open the .gnus file and modify it to be able to send and receive e-mails. To do this, you will need the SMTP and POP server information that was used for setting up your Evolution account. If you no longer have this information, your e-mail provider’s site will have this information for you.

Once you have opened your .gnus file, move the point to the first available line in the file by using the arrow keys or the C-N key binding (hold down CTRL and press N repeatedly until the point is at the first empty line in the file). Once you have the point in the right place, enter the following code:

(setq smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp.your isp.com")
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "smtp.your isp.com")))
(setq smtpmail-local-domain "your isp.com")

This will set up Gnus to send mail using the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). Where the example reads “your isp.com,” substitute the name of your Internet service provider. Remember, not all providers end in “.com”; some end in “.net.” For instance, if you are using Bell South, you would enter bellsouth.net.

To be able to receive e-mail, you need to define the Post Office Protocol (POP) server that your ISP uses. Once you have this information, you need to add the following line to the .gnus configuration file:

(setq mail-sources '((pop :server "your.pop3server.com" :user "username" )))

Gnus will now download all of your mail into a newsgroup that it creates for you. By opening this newsgroup, you can read through all of your downloaded e-mail. Since you set up the SMTP server settings, you can send e-mail as well by going to the toolbar and selecting Gnus | Send A Message. Once you have typed your message, click the Send This Message icon on the toolbar.

If you find Emacs to be a valuable tool when using your computer, practice with it as much as you can. Many more key bindings and many more tools are available to you in Emacs. The more you use this tool, the easier it gets. Learning the key bindings is like learning a second language, only you don’t have to roll your rrrr’s. Practice, practice, practice, and eventually you will find yourself using the key bindings to navigate through the buffers and frames without having to refer to a cheat sheet of any kind.

In this configuration, you will be asked to provide your password each time you start Gnus. It is possible to modify this line to automatically enter your password for you; however, this is not an advisable practice since anyone with access to your computer would be able to read all of your e-mails.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything

In addition to writing and modifying text files with Emacs, you can use this application to connect to different news servers and to read postings from the newsgroups housed there. Newsgroups are Internet message boards on a wide variety of topics. When you subscribe to a newsgroup, you can read messages posted by other users and post replies of your own. Basically, it is like a worldwide forum where people can ask questions, find answers, and debate ideas.

Emacs provides you with a built-in news reader called Gnus. To use this, you must first create a configuration file called .gnus that will be saved in your home directory. Of course, we can create that file using Emacs! So let’s open a new file, and we will name it .gnus. In the buffer, enter the following:

(setq gnus-select-method ' (nntp "news.cn99.com"))
(setq user-full-name "yourname")
(setq user-email-address "your email address")

Now write the file to disk using your key bindings.

Now that your server is set up, go to the toolbar and select Tools | Read Net News (Gnus). Emacs will now download the list of newsgroups available to you. This could take some time, so be patient.

Once the groups have been loaded, select Groups | Listing | Describe All Groups. Now you should see a long list of the different groups you can subscribe to, along with a brief description of what each group is all about. Once you find a group or two that you wish to subscribe to, from the toolbar select Groups | Subscribe | Subscribe To A Group. In the message area, Emacs will ask you which group you would like to subscribe to. Type the name of the group and press ENTER, and you will be a new subscriber! When you restart Gnus, you will see all of the groups that you subscribed to (plus a few extras that Gnus thinks you may find interesting). If Gnus is still running, from the toolbar select Buffer | Group, and the Group buffer will open in a new window.

To read the articles in a newsgroup, double-click on the newsgroup name, and you will be presented with a list of articles. Navigate to the article you wish to read and double-click it. You can move to the next article or the previous article by using the navigation arrows on the toolbar. You can also post a response to an article by selecting Post | Reply and then clicking the Send This Message icon from the toolbar.


There are many different news servers that you can choose from. News.cn99.com is one that is used for demonstration purposes, so you can substitute whichever server you like here. It is important to note that news servers often do not censor the groups that they host, so some groups may provide content that you find inappropriate. To avoid this, search for servers that host only groups that you find acceptable, or make sure to monitor the group subscriptions if you have children using this service.


A newsgroup topic is called a thread. A thread is generally started by one person who posts a question or comment; then others reply to this posting. It is considered proper etiquette to keep postings related to the thread. If you have a new topic, start a new thread.
You can navigate among the different threads by selecting the Threads menu from the toolbar and then choosing either Go To Next Thread or Go To Previous Thread.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything