Comment 51 for bug 282186

Yes, with the option "-o document-format=application/vnd.cups-postscript" you override the PDF workflow and can get PostScript programs get directly executed by the PostScript printer or the rasterizing instance of Ghostscript for non-PostScript printers. Only disadvantage is that both pstops and pdftopdf get overridden and so page management options, like N-up, selected pages, ... will not get obeyed, but with a PostScript program you probably do not want to use such options. Note also that it only works for PPD files without "cupsFilter" line or having at least one "cupsFilter" line for the application/vnd.cups-postscript input format. If in the future pure PDF printer driver solutions come up, execution of PostScript programs by the rasterizer will not be possible any more.

This way you can run arbitrary PostScript programs on your printer, for

- examining the printer's capabilities, with the CUPS test page and also with the code snippets in manufacturer-supplied PPDs which server for polling the printer default of an option (for the latter you would need some form of getting the printer's answer back to the sender of the job, this can perhaps disqualify CUPS from sending such jobs).

- using the printer as a compute server and CUPS as a compute job queuing system

- rewrite CUPS in PostScript and "print" this file to make the printer configuration-less in CUPS networks

But PDF is the better format if you simply want to print a document on your printer ...