correct way to change printers

On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 16:11, betty wrote:
> after being so proud of getting the hp photoprinter to work in
> openoffice, i recently unplugged it from the parallel port, plugged in
> the laser printer, selected laser printer as the default, printed some
> stuff. then when i plugged the color printer back in and re selected it
> as default, it will print a test page from OO but not a file. i have
> tried what i think is everything, but obviously that is not the answer.
> anyone have any experience with the gui and changing printers? maybe
> there is a specific order i should have followed in the
> unplugging/plugging default sequence.
> thanks in advance
> betty i.
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parallel port doesn't generally do well with switching while power is
on. I think that there is too much voltage in the connections to do this
conveniently / safely.

It would seem that you should be able to use the USB port on your
computer to connect to one or the other printer - generally the ink jet
printers do well on a USB connection.

Not sure of your distribution and each distro varies with it's make up
for plug & play device detection and this may be what's at work. On
redhat, you could always run 'kudzu' (as root) which would cause it to
do a device check - YMMV

Craig