Making server look like a printer

We use a main frame application that prints via IP address to our printers. There are several occasions where we need that print product to go to a text file instead of a printer. In the Windows world there is an application called NIPrint that sets up a Windows machine to look like an IP printer. We can direct the print job there and it ends up in a text file. My question is: can that be done on a Linux server and how would I go about doing that? I am running a variety of Red Hat distros, everything from RH8 to Fedora 13 with a Centos thrown in for good measure. I do a lot on the Linux boxes but printing is an area that I've not gotten into yet. Thanks.

http://tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/issue72/bright.html

This creates a PDF file... and of course there are pdf to text utilities...

I see that the article uses ps2pdf. If there is a ps2text, then I'd be in business.

Actually, there is a program called ps2ascii which rights to an ascii file instead of pdf. However, still haven't determined how to make the Linux server look like an IP printer. The suggested article explains how to set it up as a shared printer but I need to direct the job via IP address.

samba / cups will save the print job as file in the spooler so you can write a script to process it as desired. Converting back and forth between formats is not necessary.

However, I assume you want the main frame to print directly to the linux server and unless it can talk SMB this set up will not work. More information is required on the main frame printer setup i.e is it using lpr and port number etc. If the main frame uses lpr you can setup the cups-lpd daemon and configure something similar as the provided link.