Do you have certain files that you print quite often? Would you prefer to be able to just click on a desktop icon, or a panel icon to print the file? This is so much quicker than opening the file in Open Office, Abiword, or whatever, and then printing it.
This is something that’s been very helpful to me. I have several files that I print on a somewhat regular basis. Files which only change every six months or so. Opening up the file, and then printing it can take several seconds, and mouse clicks. With this method, your file can be on its way to the printer in less time than it would take you to open it up. Here’s how you do it.
Before proceeding any further, you need to make sure that you have assigned a default printer for CUPS to use when printing with a command. Please see my post about this, here, to set that up. Now, on to the one click printing.
We’re going to use a panel launcher for this example, though these instructions can be modified to put this launcher on your desktop as well.
- Right-click on the panel you want the launcher to appear & select Add to Panel.
- Choose Custom Application Launcher, and the Create Launcher box should pop up.
- Name your launcher, and give it a comment that will pop up when hovered over by the mouse pointer.
- For the command, you’ll need something like this…
lp /home/user/pathtofile - You can click on the little springboard to the left to give your launcher an icon, or not.
- Click on OK to finish
- Now you have an icon on your panel that will print a file for you with one click of your mouse.
Recent...