LINUX CUPS print background bars

do you mean to ask if cups can print alternating light background colors in a table?  sure.  If you format the print job to do just that.

care to be more specific about what you are looking for?

Yes that's what I want.  
The reports will be accounting reports.  I want to have alternating horizontal grey bars going across the page to make it easier for the users to read.

All i want to do is simulate a GREEN BAR report like a mainframe report. From top to bottom print alternating rows of grey bars.
Is there a simple of way doing this?

is the report generated by the server as a plain text file? or is it generated by the clients as part of an application?

If its a server generated text file, then you can write a txt to html conversion file that creates a html table with one row/cell per line in the text file, you can count the number of rows youve processed and if the row counter is odd add a background = #color option to the row, if its even, leave it out.

then when the html is rendered by the postscript imager this background is automatically added.

let me know if this is an option you can consider, if it isnt, maybe there is something else.

The report by a batch application program in plain ascii text file on our server.
Currently, in the script, a lpr statement is used to send it to the printer.
I just thought there might be a way to print the grey shade bars in the background for readability.

I don't want to modify our exisiting programs to embed code to print out the grey bars.

Any ideas?