Re: graphics tablets
Hello. 2012/01/14 07:22:09 -0600 ajtiM lum...@gmail.com = To freebsd-questions@freebsd.org : a I like to buy a Wacom Bamboo Capture graphics tablet (USB or serial if I will a find it. I have FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE and I use GIMP and Inkscape on KDE 4.7.3. a Does anyone has expirience with a Bamboo Capture, please? Bamboo Fun is 'just ok' to me but: - pros use to prefer Intuos series. - it's a pretty old releng_7 series freebsd and a deprecated xorg-server-1.6.5 - recently a progress was reported here about wacom driver i didn't try out yet - I experience some non-trivial quirks able to bother someone else with such a setup -- Peter Vereshagin pe...@vereshagin.org (http://vereshagin.org) pgp: A0E26627 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS
On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:17:29 +0100 Polytropon articulated: On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:21:59 +0100, Ouyang Xueyu wrote: Hello, I have Freebsd 8.2 and CUPS installed and try to print on my Brother MFC 7840W printer. The printer is accessible by a static IP address, is configured in CUPS but everytime I only get blank pages when I'm trying to print. Does anybody know a solution for this behaviour? The technical specification of the printer at http://www.brother-usa.com/mfc/modeldetail.aspx?PRODUCTID=MFC7840W#.TzbkwOsS-Jo indicates that it does understand PCL. Just for testing, you could try to _not_ use CUPS and send PCL to the printer directly, either by the system's spooling mechanism (which seems to be considered depricated now as the big desktop environments and some stand-alonge applications consider CUPS the only printing interface, which they seem to hardcode into the programs) or by the direct way, using its network connection (which is a good thing, better than USB in my opinion). Really - if the specifications say the printer can do PCL and has some kind of PS, why should it be complicated to get that excellent capabilities working with CUPS? Here is a simple test that you can use: First print something from an application (web browser, text processing program, image manipulator etc.), but send the output to a file. Most print dialogs offer a print to file choice. Save the result to /tmp/print.ps - I'll use this name for demonstration, you can use any other name. Then verify what you've printed to be a PostScript file. % file /tmp/print.ps /tmp/print.ps: PostScript document text conforming DSC level 3. You can verify the content to be printed using any PS viewer, e. g. gv or gs, or whatever comes with your desktop environment. If it is a valid PS file, you can do two things: a) Test if the printer's BR-Script3 is PS-compatible: % nc 192.168.123.456 9100 /tmp/print.ps Let's assume that 192.168.123.456 is the IP of the printer. :-) Let's also assume that port 9100 is the port where the printer accepts jobs. Some printers use different ports for their different personalities. See the documentation which port to use. If unsure, leave it blank. b) Test if the printer does understand PCL. Same assumptions apply. % printf \033k2G | nc 192.168.123.456 9100 % gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dPARANOIDSAFER -dSAFER \ -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r600x600 \ -sOutputFile=- /tmp/print.ps | nc 192.168.123.456 9100 You can see that this test specifies a ljet4 printer driver. This refers to the HP Laserjet 4 and 4000 families, but it does produce PCL, so it should be fine. Report back if this works (i. e. _which_ of them, and if not, with which unexpected results). If it does work, my suggestion would be to dump CUPS and use the system's default mechanism with a man made printer filter. It's very easy. Easier than dealing with the CUPS blackbox in my opinion... I can accomplish this on my Brother MFC-9560CDW saving in either PS or PDF format. In fact, it appears that the industry is moving away from the ps format and towards the pdf format. However, none of this explains why CUPS has so thoroughly screwed up the printing process, nor why it should demand so much user intervention to set up a printer that on most modern operating systems is trivial at best. -- Jerry ♔ Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored. Please do not ignore the Reply-To header. __ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS
On 02/12/12 23:33, Jerry wrote: On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:17:29 +0100 Polytropon articulated: On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:21:59 +0100, Ouyang Xueyu wrote: Hello, I have Freebsd 8.2 and CUPS installed and try to print on my Brother MFC 7840W printer. The printer is accessible by a static IP address, is configured in CUPS but everytime I only get blank pages when I'm trying to print. Does anybody know a solution for this behaviour? The technical specification of the printer at http://www.brother-usa.com/mfc/modeldetail.aspx?PRODUCTID=MFC7840W#.TzbkwOsS-Jo indicates that it does understand PCL. Just for testing, you could try to _not_ use CUPS and send PCL to the printer directly, either by the system's spooling mechanism (which seems to be considered depricated now as the big desktop environments and some stand-alonge applications consider CUPS the only printing interface, which they seem to hardcode into the programs) or by the direct way, using its network connection (which is a good thing, better than USB in my opinion). Really - if the specifications say the printer can do PCL and has some kind of PS, why should it be complicated to get that excellent capabilities working with CUPS? Here is a simple test that you can use: First print something from an application (web browser, text processing program, image manipulator etc.), but send the output to a file. Most print dialogs offer a print to file choice. Save the result to /tmp/print.ps - I'll use this name for demonstration, you can use any other name. Then verify what you've printed to be a PostScript file. % file /tmp/print.ps /tmp/print.ps: PostScript document text conforming DSC level 3. You can verify the content to be printed using any PS viewer, e. g. gv or gs, or whatever comes with your desktop environment. If it is a valid PS file, you can do two things: a) Test if the printer's BR-Script3 is PS-compatible: % nc 192.168.123.456 9100 /tmp/print.ps Let's assume that 192.168.123.456 is the IP of the printer. :-) Let's also assume that port 9100 is the port where the printer accepts jobs. Some printers use different ports for their different personalities. See the documentation which port to use. If unsure, leave it blank. b) Test if the printer does understand PCL. Same assumptions apply. % printf \033k2G | nc 192.168.123.456 9100 % gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dPARANOIDSAFER -dSAFER \ -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r600x600 \ -sOutputFile=- /tmp/print.ps | nc 192.168.123.456 9100 You can see that this test specifies a ljet4 printer driver. This refers to the HP Laserjet 4 and 4000 families, but it does produce PCL, so it should be fine. Report back if this works (i. e. _which_ of them, and if not, with which unexpected results). If it does work, my suggestion would be to dump CUPS and use the system's default mechanism with a man made printer filter. It's very easy. Easier than dealing with the CUPS blackbox in my opinion... I can accomplish this on my Brother MFC-9560CDW saving in either PS or PDF format. In fact, it appears that the industry is moving away from the ps format and towards the pdf format. However, none of this explains why CUPS has so thoroughly screwed up the printing process, nor why it should demand so much user intervention to set up a printer that on most modern operating systems is trivial at best. By most modern OS you mean Winblow$? You realise of course that aside from Windows and MS' other colossal clusterfuns they all use lpr and/or cups - I know of quite a few windows installations that use cups as well. I could be ignorant of a couple of OS', but I doubt it (excepting plan9). In the earlier versions (NT based) Windows used to use lpr as well I believe, and I don't think that has changed since. So the differences in setup and installation are minimal and very similar unless I'm very much mistaken and the fairies have come and are installing printers for windows now. Local printers are a slightly different case, but you still need to make some selections and input. Most would call cups trivial as well, and then would put the blame on the manufacturers in errant implementations. But the foomatic project has really done a wonderful job putting together a system that works for some many different models, and a lot of printers have now got offerings of drivers to the linux and open source community. The biggest problem comes with using many interpreters of a single language. Thankfully pcl works on the majority of printers (network), and is practically a standard in the enterprise world, so you're still not marooned with a paper weight :) Unless you're a printshop and/or into graphic arts pcl will be more than sufficient for use. If you are working in graphic arts then I doubt you'd be using a brother or something that doesn't use pure ps anyway. ___
Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:25:06 +1000 Da Rock articulated: The biggest problem comes with using many interpreters of a single language. Thankfully pcl works on the majority of printers (network), and is practically a standard in the enterprise world, so you're still not marooned with a paper weight :) Unless you're a printshop and/or into graphic arts pcl will be more than sufficient for use. If you are working in graphic arts then I doubt you'd be using a brother or something that doesn't use pure ps anyway. You might want to check out: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting. It appears that ps is no-longer the format of choice but is being replaced by PDF, a format that is natively supported by many printers. In addition, there is an active project creating a wrapper framework for the manufacturer's Windows/Mac OS X drivers, like the ndiswrapper for WLAN cards, which is something I suggested a long time ago. -- Jerry ♔ Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored. Please do not ignore the Reply-To header. __ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS
On 02/13/12 01:00, Jerry wrote: On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:25:06 +1000 Da Rock articulated: The biggest problem comes with using many interpreters of a single language. Thankfully pcl works on the majority of printers (network), and is practically a standard in the enterprise world, so you're still not marooned with a paper weight :) Unless you're a printshop and/or into graphic arts pcl will be more than sufficient for use. If you are working in graphic arts then I doubt you'd be using a brother or something that doesn't use pure ps anyway. You might want to check out: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting. It appears that ps is no-longer the format of choice but is being replaced by PDF, a format that is natively supported by many printers. In addition, there is an active project creating a wrapper framework for the manufacturer's Windows/Mac OS X drivers, like the ndiswrapper for WLAN cards, which is something I suggested a long time ago. That line between ps and pdf became blurred a long time ago. The essentially have the same root. As for MacOSX drivers I'd find that interesting given its similarities and shared root with FreeBSD, and the origin of cups (at least the biggest backer). I don't know the value of creating a wrapper for Windows drivers given they use PCL mostly anyway. Main advantage I'd suppose is in GDI drivers... As a printer specialist I stay well away from printers that don't support a standard anyway - I'll usually expect PCL at least. They're not worth the hassle, and they may be cheap but you get what you pay for in the end. If I was to buy a printer I buy to suit the need and maybe allow for expansion; so if I needed a high quality graphics printer it would generally support all OS' anyway, desktop I would do the same. Don't try to cut cost or you can end up cutting something else as well - the manufacturers will always get their pound of flesh one way or another: cheap printer = expensive parts/ink/toner, and more. And if thats not true, then they're too cheap and simply not worth it- frustration central (on _any_ OS that is!). ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
