FreeBSD's CUPS / Postscript / Printing mailing-list

[Matthias Apitz]

Hello,

I'm now and than in the need of discussing CUPS / Postscript related
printing questions. In the past there was www.cups.org with a CUPS
related bug tracking system and user forums around CUPS. It seems that
the server crashed some time ago and it's unknown when (and how) it will
come back to life. Even when, it seems that some important part of CUPS
(the text filters) is split away to the 'open printing folks', and I'm
unsure if the forums will cover the full tool chain: from the file,
through the job scheduler, filters, backend and printer device.

That's why I wanted to ask, what about our own mailing list like
freebsd-printing@ ?

Even in the new age of colourful images, printing is essential for
servers, and sometimes a tough job.

Comments?

matthias
-- 
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CUPS building error in FreeBSD 9.1

[Antonios Atlasis]

Hello to the list,

I made a fresh install of FreeBSD 9.1 on a 74bit system and I am trying to
install everything I need using ports and not packages. However, when I try
to install cups (version 1.5.4), even in the default configuration, I
receive the following build errors:

echo Linking ippserver...
Linking ippserver...
cc -L../cgi-bin -L../cups -L../filter -L../ppdc -L../scheduler
-L/usr/local/lib -Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib -Wl,-R/usr/local/lib
-Wall -Wno-format-y2k -Wunused -fPIC -Os -g -fstack-protector -o ippserver
ippserver.o  ../cups/libcups.a \
 -lssl -lcrypto  -pthread -lcrypt -lm -lssp_nonshared -liconv  -lz
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `http_write_ssl':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:4637: undefined
reference to `gnutls_record_send'
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `_httpWait':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:2901: undefined
reference to `gnutls_record_check_pending'
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `http_setup_ssl':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3965: undefined
reference to `gnutls_certificate_allocate_credentials'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3967: undefined
reference to `gnutls_init'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3968: undefined
reference to `gnutls_set_default_priority'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3969: undefined
reference to `gnutls_server_name_set'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3971: undefined
reference to `gnutls_credentials_set'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3972: undefined
reference to `gnutls_transport_set_ptr'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3973: undefined
reference to `gnutls_transport_set_pull_function'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3974: undefined
reference to `gnutls_transport_set_push_function'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3976: undefined
reference to `gnutls_handshake'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3981: undefined
reference to `gnutls_error_is_fatal'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3986: undefined
reference to `gnutls_strerror'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3988: undefined
reference to `gnutls_deinit'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3989: undefined
reference to `gnutls_certificate_free_credentials'
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `http_shutdown_ssl':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:4320: undefined
reference to `gnutls_bye'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:4321: undefined
reference to `gnutls_deinit'
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:4322: undefined
reference to `gnutls_certificate_free_credentials'
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `http_read_ssl':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:3466: undefined
reference to `gnutls_record_recv'
../cups/libcups.a(http.o): In function `httpInitialize':
/usr/ports/print/cups-client/work/cups-1.5.4/cups/http.c:1527: undefined
reference to `gnutls_global_init'
gmake[1]: *** [ippserver] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory
`/usr/ports/print/cups-base/work/cups-1.5.4/test'
gmake: *** [all] Error 1
*** [do-build] Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/print/cups-base.
*** [install] Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/print/cups-base.
*** [build-depends] Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/print/cups.


Any help is highly appreciated

Regards

Antonios
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Re: How can i disable cups, docbook, gutenprint and other ports?

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2012 20:56:59 +0200, lokada...@gmx.de wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> How can i disable cups, docbook and other ports from compiling after 
> port update?
> I have no printer and no use of cups or docbook.

If you don't mind the _time_ required for building those ports
(and taking into mind that the disk space occupied doesn't
even matter as disks are big and cheap today), you don't have
to _enable_ CUPS if you're actually _not_ using it. That would
be "disabling" them. :-)

Sadly, there's no really comfortable way of not _building_ them
as they are (almost "hardcoded"!) dependencies for other ports
you might be using. There are some config screens (see "make
config" and "make config-recursive" or portmaster's --force-config
option) where you _might_ have the chance to de-select some of
those ports so they won't build. But as I said, that depends on
the "primary" ports you're using and their dependencies.

You know, "by accident", you could even install LaTeX (teTeX)
as a dependency! :-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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How can i disable cups, docbook, gutenprint and other ports?

[lokada...@gmx.de]

Hi all,

How can i disable cups, docbook and other ports from compiling after 
port update?

I have no printer and no use of cups or docbook.

*Sorry for my english*
Greetings
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Re: cups slow when printing from firefox

[markus . hoenicka]

Leslie Jensen writes:
 > Hi Markus.
 > 
 > If you do a search in the archives you'll see that some of us have
 > printing problems with Firefox. Some even suspect that printing in Firefox
 > is broken.
 > 
 > I myself has not been able to solve my specific printing problems which
 > include both Firefox but also Libre office.
 > 
 > I'm running Win7 in Virtualbox in order to fix my printing :-(
 > 

Hi Leslie,

good to know, I thought it's just me being too stupid to press the
right button. For the time being I'll resort to printing to a file and
sending that to lpr, instead of running Win7.

regards,
Markus

-- 
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AQ score 38
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Re: cups slow when printing from firefox

[Leslie Jensen]

> Hi all,
>
> I'm struggling with a speed issue when trying to print stuff from
> firefox (10.0.2,1). I've set up cups (meta package 1.5.2) on my box
> which uses a Lexmark E360dn printer via ethernet. The printer has a
> postscript emulation which is set as the default (as opposed to
> PCL). I've used a PPD file from openprinting.org which claims that the
> printer is 100% supported. Printing works fine in general with all
> sorts of text and images, including PDF and LibreOffice and
> whatnot. However, trying to print maps from maps.google.de sends one
> CPU to 100% for a couple of minutes. Printing the same map from a
> Debian box takes a couple of seconds. I can print the map to a file,
> and print that file with lpr which also takes just a few seconds.
>
> While printing from firefox directly, I noticed a process gsc owned by
> cups which causes most of the CPU load. I take this as an indication
> that the postscript output from firefox is incorrectly rasterized on
> my box, instead of sending the postscript data directly to the
> printer. I did not make any changes to the default config files except
> for adding the printer through the localhost:631 interface.
>
> Is there anything else that I need to configure, either on the firefox
> or the cups end, to make printing maps faster?
>
> regards
> Markus
>
> --
> Markus Hoenicka
> http://www.mhoenicka.de
> AQ score 38
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>

Hi Markus.

If you do a search in the archives you'll see that some of us have
printing problems with Firefox. Some even suspect that printing in Firefox
is broken.

I myself has not been able to solve my specific printing problems which
include both Firefox but also Libre office.

I'm running Win7 in Virtualbox in order to fix my printing :-(

Regards

/Leslie



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cups slow when printing from firefox

[markus . hoenicka]

Hi all,

I'm struggling with a speed issue when trying to print stuff from
firefox (10.0.2,1). I've set up cups (meta package 1.5.2) on my box
which uses a Lexmark E360dn printer via ethernet. The printer has a
postscript emulation which is set as the default (as opposed to
PCL). I've used a PPD file from openprinting.org which claims that the
printer is 100% supported. Printing works fine in general with all
sorts of text and images, including PDF and LibreOffice and
whatnot. However, trying to print maps from maps.google.de sends one
CPU to 100% for a couple of minutes. Printing the same map from a
Debian box takes a couple of seconds. I can print the map to a file,
and print that file with lpr which also takes just a few seconds.

While printing from firefox directly, I noticed a process gsc owned by
cups which causes most of the CPU load. I take this as an indication
that the postscript output from firefox is incorrectly rasterized on
my box, instead of sending the postscript data directly to the
printer. I did not make any changes to the default config files except
for adding the printer through the localhost:631 interface.

Is there anything else that I need to configure, either on the firefox
or the cups end, to make printing maps faster?

regards
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
http://www.mhoenicka.de
AQ score 38
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerome Herman]

On 27/02/2012 22:24, Polytropon wrote:

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:29:12 +0100, Jerome Herman wrote:

Not at all, the web admin for adding a printer is basically an html
version of lpadmin. It is just easier with the web site.

Easier as in: It leaves _essential_ options aside so that
you can't perform some of the tasks. :-)
Technically speaking, it doesn't leaves essential options aside, it just 
forgets to mention them. But I get your point.







OK this means the ppd does not handle everything. Might get a little
complicated.

When I use the foo2qpdl-wrapper which I assume does use
the same PPD file, it works as intended.
Nope, the wrapper is just used to convert ps to QPDL in a plain file. 
The PPD does a lot more, including a bit of dialog with the printer to 
make sure it is configured correctly. Most of the time it also helps 
handling different parameters such as paper size and orientation, color 
or B&W etc.








They did, then they got bought by Apple...

I should make myself more familiar with the command line
tool. Still I hope I won't need CUPS anytime soon. :-)




No, please don't blame CUPS, it is earnestly trying to cope with
everything thrown at him (stupid printers, gnome DBus autoconfig, Apple
Mac OSX and so on), and it is doing a fairly good job at it.

I know that printing currently isn't as easy as I (with
my simple mind) assume. I've been using CUPS in the _past_
without major trouble, and even "impossible" things (like
using parallel dotmatrix printers) were easily configurable
even through the web interface. Seems that some parts got
disimproved to please a certain audience...
Well Apple way of handling devices : if it doesn't work the way we want, 
it doesn't exist.







I for one
do not want to go back to the time where one had to learn 2 lines long
LPD command just to print in color, double side, with an ICM profile.

I have several printers for varying _how_ to print. However,
I like the idea of selecting duplex / no duplex in the
printing dialog (which I currently do by selecting a different
"virtual" printer: Laserjet = b/w two-sided, Laserjet-nodup =
b/w single-sided, Samsung = color single-sided).


Normally that is what PPD is for, giving you a bit of control on all 
those parameters, so you do not have to create dozens of config per 
printer. (This said quite a lot of my users love to have dozens of 
configure for one printer, even under windows and mac. They prefer 
choosing a printer called Graphic_A3_Color_2side than having to choose 
options themselves)




Getting back to your problem. Apparently you are using an old version of
foo2qpdl, you may want to grab it from the web site directly and compile
it by hand (One of the very rare case where using the default
package/port is not a good idea at all)
You can find the howto here : http://foo2qpdl.rkkda.com/
You will need to download and link the ICM profile to have acceptable
print quality.  The latest PPD is 24 874 bytes in size.

I will try that. I have installed the packages

foo2zjs-20110609
foomatic-db-20090530_2
foomatic-db-engine-4.0.7,2
gutenprint-foomatic-5.2.4_2

where foo2qpdl and foo2qpdl-wrapper come from.

I'm happy that I now have the "fallback method" of stopping
CUPS, starting lpd, and using -PSamsung in order to use the
color printer (not often required, it's my _first_ one, I've
never needed one, really).

Using a Linksys Wireless-G WPS54GU2 print server (WLAN, LAN,
USB, parallel) - following Jerry's suggestion - I'll try tp
get rid of the USB cable at the next step. Wireless printing
isn't urgently needed (as I'm happily wired here), but real
networking is much better than this local fiddling with USB
(so I can print to the color printer from all of my systems
when it's _real_ networked, just as the HP Laserjet 4000d
which even runs its own lpd "server").
On small printers, nothing beats socket connections. But the USB to 
ethernet transform can be quite tricky sometimes. Usually QPDL is well 
supported, it is after all a real interpreter.


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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerry]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:24:32 +0100
Polytropon articulated:

> Using a Linksys Wireless-G WPS54GU2 print server (WLAN, LAN,
> USB, parallel) - following Jerry's suggestion - I'll try tp
> get rid of the USB cable at the next step.

I spoke to an associate yesterday who claims he used a USB to Ethernet
adapter on an older Canon printer and it worked fine. Everything was
detected automatically. Obviously, that was on a Windows machine, WinXP
to be exact. I still think it should work on FreeBSD although it will
undoubtedly need a lot more user intervention. The router was a
Netgate wireless model. He did not remember which model.

Good luck!

-- 
Jerry ♔

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:29:12 +0100, Jerome Herman wrote:
> Not at all, the web admin for adding a printer is basically an html 
> version of lpadmin. It is just easier with the web site.

Easier as in: It leaves _essential_ options aside so that
you can't perform some of the tasks. :-)



> OK this means the ppd does not handle everything. Might get a little 
> complicated.

When I use the foo2qpdl-wrapper which I assume does use
the same PPD file, it works as intended.



> They did, then they got bought by Apple...

I should make myself more familiar with the command line
tool. Still I hope I won't need CUPS anytime soon. :-)



> No, please don't blame CUPS, it is earnestly trying to cope with 
> everything thrown at him (stupid printers, gnome DBus autoconfig, Apple 
> Mac OSX and so on), and it is doing a fairly good job at it.

I know that printing currently isn't as easy as I (with
my simple mind) assume. I've been using CUPS in the _past_
without major trouble, and even "impossible" things (like
using parallel dotmatrix printers) were easily configurable
even through the web interface. Seems that some parts got
disimproved to please a certain audience...



> I for one 
> do not want to go back to the time where one had to learn 2 lines long 
> LPD command just to print in color, double side, with an ICM profile.

I have several printers for varying _how_ to print. However,
I like the idea of selecting duplex / no duplex in the
printing dialog (which I currently do by selecting a different
"virtual" printer: Laserjet = b/w two-sided, Laserjet-nodup =
b/w single-sided, Samsung = color single-sided).



> Getting back to your problem. Apparently you are using an old version of 
> foo2qpdl, you may want to grab it from the web site directly and compile 
> it by hand (One of the very rare case where using the default 
> package/port is not a good idea at all)
> You can find the howto here : http://foo2qpdl.rkkda.com/
> You will need to download and link the ICM profile to have acceptable 
> print quality.  The latest PPD is 24 874 bytes in size.

I will try that. I have installed the packages

foo2zjs-20110609
foomatic-db-20090530_2
foomatic-db-engine-4.0.7,2
gutenprint-foomatic-5.2.4_2

where foo2qpdl and foo2qpdl-wrapper come from.

I'm happy that I now have the "fallback method" of stopping
CUPS, starting lpd, and using -PSamsung in order to use the
color printer (not often required, it's my _first_ one, I've
never needed one, really).

Using a Linksys Wireless-G WPS54GU2 print server (WLAN, LAN,
USB, parallel) - following Jerry's suggestion - I'll try tp
get rid of the USB cable at the next step. Wireless printing
isn't urgently needed (as I'm happily wired here), but real
networking is much better than this local fiddling with USB
(so I can print to the color printer from all of my systems
when it's _real_ networked, just as the HP Laserjet 4000d
which even runs its own lpd "server").



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerome Herman]

On 26/02/2012 18:46, Polytropon wrote:

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:42:08 +0100, Jerome Herman wrote:

You did nothing wrong, on the contrary. You now have a prefectly working
printer. You just need to tell cups it exists.
Since

# foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps>   cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx>   /dev/ulpt0

works, you should be able to create a new printer using a direct device.
So go on as if you wanted to create a network printer, choose
HPJetDirect (for example) when asked about the connection. Then when you
have to input the uri remove the socket:// and type usb:///dev/ulpt0.
(Yes triple / before dev)
The you can process as usual for name, options and PPD.
If it doesn't work try parallel:///dev/ulpt0

Interesting approach. Fully "unimaginable" from the CUPS
"guide to things" (i. e. how normal users _assume_ things
should be done!), but interesting. I'll try that.

The option to enter such kind of data ("parallel://" and
"usb://" isn't mentioned):



Add Printer
---

Connection: _

Examples:

 http://hostname:631/ipp/
 http://hostname:631/ipp/port1

 ipp://hostname/ipp/
 ipp://hostname/ipp/port1

 lpd://hostname/queue

 socket://hostname
 socket://hostname:9100

 See "Network Printers" for the correct URI to use with your print

 [ Continue ]

See? Nothing for parallel or USB to enter manually.



It's like going to a car salesman, buying a car, but before
driving home from his yard, quickly exchanging the car you
bought for the car you initially wanted. :-)
Not at all, the web admin for adding a printer is basically an html 
version of lpadmin. It is just easier with the web site.







Normally one should work.

Today, I tried to add the printer again. Unlike yesterday,
it got detected! (Note: System shut down during night.)
It also accepts print jobs, but they are stuck somewhere.

% lpq -PSamsung_CLX-216x_Series
Samsung_CLX-216x_Series is ready
RankOwner   Job File(s)Total Size
1st poly202 Unbenannt1 7563264 bytes

This is from an OpenOffice session. The printer doesn't
print anything. No action.
OK this means the ppd does not handle everything. Might get a little 
complicated.








Basically in cups choosing "network connection" allows you to input any
URI  you want, including file and raw (now defunct I think - it was
mainly for debug anyway).

Why haven't the CUPS people thought of a kind of "know what
you want mode" where you can simply enter what you think is
correct, no matter if any auto-detection magic did work (or
not)?

They did, then they got bought by Apple...






I never tried this specific printer, but this trick worked well on a few
HP and Canon.




Tell us how it went.

I tried both of your suggestions for specifying the connection
and chose the PPD file for the printer CLX-216xsplc.ppd (size
12208 bytes). Jobs get queued, printer "is ready", but no
action on the printer.

However, when I issue a command like this:

% foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c /tmp/testpage.ps>  /dev/ulpt0
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'

The printer works. The result is _very_ dark. But hey, it's
stupid commodity hardware, and RGB and CMY are "a little bit"
different, and nothing of the cheap crap is calibrated. :-)

In the system log, I get those:

ugen1.5:  at usbus1
ulpt0:  on usbus1
ulpt0: using bi-directional mode
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error

Unlike yesterday, the printer now is on ugen1.5. I'll have to play
with the permissions a bit, maybe that's the reason why nothing
can be printed, even though the changes I made for device permissions
should cover all imaginable cases - all devices /dev/usb/* now
are root:cups with crwxrwx--- permissions
, the /dev/u(n)lpt0
devices are also root:cups with crw-rw---- permissions.

Really, I _need_ to dump CUPS relapse to _standard_ system tools
that seem to be easily capable of what the web-driven autodetected
elastic-legged program magic of CUPS can't. :-)


No, please don't blame CUPS, it is earnestly trying to cope with 
everything thrown at him (stupid printers, gnome DBus autoconfig, Apple 
Mac OSX and so on), and it is doing a fairly good job at it. I for one 
do not want to go back to the time where one had to learn 2 lines long 
LPD

Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012, Polytropon wrote:


On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:08:52 +1000, Da Rock wrote:

I don't know that I can add anything to the cups discussion here, but I
understand you'd rather use lpr anyway. You are aware that the printer
will only speak splix the samsung universal driver language? So any
config would have to be based on that.


The foo2qpdl-wrapper program seems to support that fine.




Once you have that working maybe you can manually add the printer in
cups using lpd.


Maybe? For sure! It's quite easy to do it (make entry in
/etc/printcap, create spool directories, write printer
filter one-liner "foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c" which is the
essential part). I just hope printing will be possible
from applications (Opera, OpenOffice and Gimp are the
primary candidates) afterwards.


Opera, I have not tried.  OpenOffice and LibreOffice print through lpd 
fine.  Printing through Gutenprint in Gimp also works without CUPS. 
Something has a probably-unnecessary dependency on cups-client, so it's 
installed here, but none of the rest of CUPS.


PS: using the non-resetting unlpt0 device is often helpful.  A network 
connection is still better.

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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerry]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:03:58 +0100
Polytropon articulated:

> I _never_ would buy a USB printer, and I would also never
> buy something that doesn't talk PS (or at least PCL).

Both "PS" and to a lesser extent "PCL" are becoming passé. You might
want to seriously consider "PDF". The better Brother printers fully
support it as do some of the better printers from other manufacturers.
You might want to check out

for further details. The "PS" format is going to become considerably
less important in a relatively short time in my estimation.

By the way, have you considered a USB to Ethernet adapter? Totally
untested with a printer, but it might work quite well. If it works, you
could plug it into a wireless router and print from anywhere sans nasty
cables, etcetera. I print wirelessly, and I love it. It "just works" and
it makes my life simpler.

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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:08:52 +1000, Da Rock wrote:
> I don't know that I can add anything to the cups discussion here, but I 
> understand you'd rather use lpr anyway. You are aware that the printer 
> will only speak splix the samsung universal driver language? So any 
> config would have to be based on that.

The foo2qpdl-wrapper program seems to support that fine.



> Once you have that working maybe you can manually add the printer in 
> cups using lpd.

Maybe? For sure! It's quite easy to do it (make entry in
/etc/printcap, create spool directories, write printer
filter one-liner "foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c" which is the
essential part). I just hope printing will be possible
from applications (Opera, OpenOffice and Gimp are the
primary candidates) afterwards. You know, many "modern"
programs _expect_ CUPS to be present, some have hardcoded
"calls" to CUPS programs, some seem to even _not_ output
PS (which should be standard), but instead PCL or whatnot.



> JIC you haven't considered this yet... HIH :)

Considered - yes, but I thought I would be able to avoid
it and use the "modern" CUPS toolkit for something simple
like printing. :-)



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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:42:08 +0100, Jerome Herman wrote:
> You did nothing wrong, on the contrary. You now have a prefectly working 
> printer. You just need to tell cups it exists.
> Since
> 
>   # foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps>  cupstest.xqx
>   # cat cupstest.xqx>  /dev/ulpt0
> 
> works, you should be able to create a new printer using a direct device.
> So go on as if you wanted to create a network printer, choose 
> HPJetDirect (for example) when asked about the connection. Then when you 
> have to input the uri remove the socket:// and type usb:///dev/ulpt0. 
> (Yes triple / before dev)
> The you can process as usual for name, options and PPD.
> If it doesn't work try parallel:///dev/ulpt0

Interesting approach. Fully "unimaginable" from the CUPS
"guide to things" (i. e. how normal users _assume_ things
should be done!), but interesting. I'll try that.

The option to enter such kind of data ("parallel://" and
"usb://" isn't mentioned):



Add Printer
---

Connection: _

Examples:

http://hostname:631/ipp/
http://hostname:631/ipp/port1

ipp://hostname/ipp/
ipp://hostname/ipp/port1

lpd://hostname/queue

socket://hostname
socket://hostname:9100

See "Network Printers" for the correct URI to use with your print

[ Continue ]

See? Nothing for parallel or USB to enter manually.



It's like going to a car salesman, buying a car, but before
driving home from his yard, quickly exchanging the car you
bought for the car you initially wanted. :-)



> Normally one should work.

Today, I tried to add the printer again. Unlike yesterday,
it got detected! (Note: System shut down during night.)
It also accepts print jobs, but they are stuck somewhere.

% lpq -PSamsung_CLX-216x_Series
Samsung_CLX-216x_Series is ready
RankOwner   Job File(s)Total Size
1st poly202 Unbenannt1 7563264 bytes

This is from an OpenOffice session. The printer doesn't
print anything. No action.



> Basically in cups choosing "network connection" allows you to input any 
> URI  you want, including file and raw (now defunct I think - it was 
> mainly for debug anyway).

Why haven't the CUPS people thought of a kind of "know what
you want mode" where you can simply enter what you think is
correct, no matter if any auto-detection magic did work (or
not)?



> I never tried this specific printer, but this trick worked well on a few 
> HP and Canon.



> Tell us how it went.

I tried both of your suggestions for specifying the connection
and chose the PPD file for the printer CLX-216xsplc.ppd (size
12208 bytes). Jobs get queued, printer "is ready", but no
action on the printer.

However, when I issue a command like this:

% foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c /tmp/testpage.ps > /dev/ulpt0
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'
pcache: unable to open '/home/poly/.ghostscript/cache/gs_cache'

The printer works. The result is _very_ dark. But hey, it's
stupid commodity hardware, and RGB and CMY are "a little bit"
different, and nothing of the cheap crap is calibrated. :-)

In the system log, I get those:

ugen1.5:  at usbus1
ulpt0:  on usbus1
ulpt0: using bi-directional mode
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error
ulpt0: output error

Unlike yesterday, the printer now is on ugen1.5. I'll have to play
with the permissions a bit, maybe that's the reason why nothing
can be printed, even though the changes I made for device permissions
should cover all imaginable cases - all devices /dev/usb/* now
are root:cups with crwxrwx--- permissions, the /dev/u(n)lpt0
devices are also root:cups with crw-rw permissions.

Really, I _need_ to dump CUPS relapse to _standard_ system tools
that seem to be easily capable of what the web-driven autodetected
elastic-legged program magic of CUPS can't. :-)




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Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerome Herman]

On 25/02/2012 22:14, Polytropon wrote:

I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
supposed to be used for installing a printer works.

The "Add Printer" button leads to this:



Add Printer
---
  Local Printers:   
Discovered Network Printers:
  Other Network Printers: o Internet Printing Protocol (http)
  o Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)
  o LPD/LPR Host or Printer
  o AppSocket/HP JetDirect
  [ Continue ]

No local printers can be selected (even though the
printer is connected, switched on and woken up).



And "Find New Printers" shows this:



Available Printers
--
No printers found.



Excellent auto detection. :-)



The corresponding device for the printer is this:

ulpt0:  on usbus4
ulpt0: using bi-directional mode

ugen4.2:
at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON

crw-rw  1 root  cups0, 142 Feb 25 21:42 /dev/ulpt0

I have installed all packages I can imagine:

    cups-1.4.6
cups-base-1.4.6_6
cups-client-1.4.6
cups-image-1.4.6
cups-pstoraster-8.15.4_6
    gutenprint-cups-5.2.4_2
foo2zjs-20110609
foomatic-db-20090530_2
foomatic-db-engine-4.0.7,2
gutenprint-foomatic-5.2.4_2
foo2zjs-20110609

I also have the CLX-216xsplc.ppd PPD file available
which I think I'd like to hand over to CUPS somewhere.

ALTERNATIVE: If someone could explain how it's easier
to make a lpr filter (for the system's printer service),
I'd also appreciate this.

I've already tried this:

# foo2xqx-wrapper cupstest.ps>  cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx>  /dev/ulpt0

It causes the LED of the printer to blink, but nothing is
printed, even though the printer startes to make sounds
(involving the print mechanism, but not the sheet feeder).

If I use

# foo2qpdl-wrapper cupstest.ps>  cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx>  /dev/ulpt0

the CUPS test page is printed, but not in color (only b/w).
After looking into the manpage,

# foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps>  cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx>  /dev/ulpt0

makes the printer print properly.

Okay, it works.

How am I supposed to use a PPD file with CUPS when no
local printer is shown?

I "need" CUPS (or at least my programs seem to think
that), how should it be done?

Okay, I could make a simple printer filter. I could then
integrate that with /etc/printcap (as I do with my PCL
HP Laserjet 4000d). I think it should be possible to code
that similar to a parallel printer (with ulpt instead
of lpt device specification for the lp= parameter...

What am I doing wrong? :-)


You did nothing wrong, on the contrary. You now have a prefectly working 
printer. You just need to tell cups it exists.

Since

# foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps>  cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx>  /dev/ulpt0

works, you should be able to create a new printer using a direct device.
So go on as if you wanted to create a network printer, choose 
HPJetDirect (for example) when asked about the connection. Then when you 
have to input the uri remove the socket:// and type usb:///dev/ulpt0. 
(Yes triple / before dev)

The you can process as usual for name, options and PPD.
If it doesn't work try parallel:///dev/ulpt0
Normally one should work.

Basically in cups choosing "network connection" allows you to input any 
URI  you want, including file and raw (now defunct I think - it was 
mainly for debug anyway).


I never tried this specific printer, but this trick worked well on a few 
HP and Canon.


Tell us how it went.

Jerome Herman
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/26/12 08:14, Polytropon wrote:

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:07:36 +0100, C. P. Ghost wrote:

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Polytropon  wrote:

I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
supposed to be used for installing a printer works.

(... snip ...)


What am I doing wrong? :-)

Have you heeded *all* the advices here?
   /usr/ports/print/cups-base/pkg-message

Permissions are usually the culprit when CUPS doesn't work.

Done (even with the variation of 0660 vs. 0770 as suggested
in that file):

[system=10]
add path 'unlpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'ulpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'lpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'usb/4.2.*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'usb*' mode 0770 group cups

Same result == no result. :-)
I don't know that I can add anything to the cups discussion here, but I 
understand you'd rather use lpr anyway. You are aware that the printer 
will only speak splix the samsung universal driver language? So any 
config would have to be based on that.


Once you have that working maybe you can manually add the printer in 
cups using lpd.


JIC you haven't considered this yet... HIH :)
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:07:36 +0100, C. P. Ghost wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Polytropon  wrote:
> > I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
> > laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
> > web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
> > supposed to be used for installing a printer works.
> 
> (... snip ...)
> 
> > What am I doing wrong? :-)
> 
> Have you heeded *all* the advices here?
>   /usr/ports/print/cups-base/pkg-message
> 
> Permissions are usually the culprit when CUPS doesn't work.

Done (even with the variation of 0660 vs. 0770 as suggested
in that file):

[system=10]
add path 'unlpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'ulpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'lpt*' mode 0660 group cups
    add path 'usb/4.2.*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'usb*' mode 0770 group cups

Same result == no result. :-)



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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[C. P. Ghost]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Polytropon  wrote:
> I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
> laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
> web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
> supposed to be used for installing a printer works.

(... snip ...)

> What am I doing wrong? :-)

Have you heeded *all* the advices here?
  /usr/ports/print/cups-base/pkg-message

Permissions are usually the culprit when CUPS doesn't work.

-cpghost.

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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:55:36 -0500, Jerry wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:14:33 +0100
> Polytropon articulated:
> 
> > I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
> > laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
> > web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
> > supposed to be used for installing a printer works.
> 
> USB sucks on FreeBSD.

In regards to some devices - yes, I fully agree.



> Sorry, I don't care who gets pissed off about
> that remark.

I don't. It's not the first time I get annoyed by USB. :-)



> Apparently, your printer only supports USB.

Sadly yes, it's the "no-letter" variant (no N for networked
or W for wireless). CUPS seems to be unable to detect that
printer even though it is connected (as I could print to it
without CUPS successfully). However, CUPS always seemed to
have some trouble with connected _local_ printers, I remember
that it was impossible to install a locally connected parallel
printer (needed for specific forms), and it was also impossible
to install a printer that's _currently_ not connected (even
though I knew all its paramters).



> If you have
> just purchased it, I might recommend returning it and getting one that
> is wireless ready.

No such deal, I got this printer as "payment" (others would
say, for free), just purchased new toner cartridges, and the
"press button and make a color copy" function works quite
well. As I've mostly used this printer as a "dull copier",
I thought I could _easily_ (in CUPS's terminology!) use it
as a printer. Ha ha. :-)

I _never_ would buy a USB printer, and I would also never
buy something that doesn't talk PS (or at least PCL).



> Believe me, you will appreciate the flexibility that
> offers.

Regular wired networking printer would have been fine too.
I use my HP Laserjet 4000 duplex that way - works like a
charm, out of the box, no fiddling with annoying details.
However, that HP is _office_ equipment, while the Samsung
is for living room use. :-)


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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:26:29 -0600, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> Hope this can help:
> 
> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=27666
> 
> There are many things that could be interfering?

Done as explained in the thread. Even

# cp /usr/local/share/examples/cups/ulpt-cupsd.conf /usr/local/etc/devd

has been done.



> - Create /etc/devfs.rules with the following, which sets the
> permissions and associates print devices with the cups group:
> 
> [system=10]
> add path 'unlpt*' mode 0660 group cups
> add path 'ulpt*' mode 0660 group cups
> add path 'lpt*' mode 0660 group cups

Checked and already present. I think I should not have
to fiddle with the ugen* devices?

Note: The scanner is currently not interesting to me,
but sane-find-scanners reports it:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04e8
[Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.],
product=0x3425 [CLX-216x Series])
at libusb:/dev/usb:/dev/ugen4.2

The printer should be on a similar address, but it does
already pop up as ulpt device which should be good. :-)

An additional

ulpt0: output error

message appear in the system log after the device is
recognized (plugged in).

I also made a comparable set of settings in /etc/devfs.conf
if the printer is detected at boot time.

own ulpt0   root:cups
permulpt0   0666
own unlpt0  root:cups
permunlpt0  0666

That should be fine.


> - Add root and other users to cups group in /etc/group

Done.



> - Enable CUPS and the above rules at startup by adding these lines to
> /etc/rc.conf:
> 
> cupsd_enable="YES"
> devfs_system_ruleset="system"

Also already done. I'm already running CUPS to address the
HP Laerjet 4000d via LAN (what a waste, I know).



> Then hopefully the printer shows up in cups http://localhost:631 :)

No auto-detection, no local printers to be configured. :-(



> If none of this works, you may try adding the apsfilter port and use
> it to configure the printer?  But see if the above helps.

I've been using apsfilter in the past happily as it could
even to things like

% lpr sometext.txt

but CUPS truncates the output as soon as an Umlaut or Eszett
appears. Great multilingual tool. :-)

As I said, I "have" (note the quotes) to use CUPS because
many programs say so. For example, Opera doesn't play with
system's lpr anymore, Gimp has hardcoded stuff in it, and
I believe many programs will follow this road...

Anyway, I will surely dump CUPS as it doesn't work for me.
Brings no benefit, even the simplest things (adding a
printer by specifying port and type) is _impossible_).
I'll begin to write a lpr printer filter instead. That
has been proven to work (see initial message). :-)



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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Jerry]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:14:33 +0100
Polytropon articulated:

> I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
> laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
> web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
> supposed to be used for installing a printer works.

USB sucks on FreeBSD. Sorry, I don't care who gets pissed off about
that remark. Apparently, your printer only supports USB. If you have
just purchased it, I might recommend returning it and getting one that
is wireless ready. Believe me, you will appreciate the flexibility that
offers.

-- 
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Re: Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Antonio Olivares]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Polytropon  wrote:
> I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
> laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
> web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
> supposed to be used for installing a printer works.
>
> The "Add Printer" button leads to this:
>
>
>
> Add Printer
> ---
>             Local Printers:
> Discovered Network Printers:
>     Other Network Printers: o Internet Printing Protocol (http)
>                             o Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)
>                             o LPD/LPR Host or Printer
>                             o AppSocket/HP JetDirect
>                             [ Continue ]
>
> No local printers can be selected (even though the
> printer is connected, switched on and woken up).
>
>
>
> And "Find New Printers" shows this:
>
>
>
> Available Printers
> --
> No printers found.
>
>
>
> Excellent auto detection. :-)
>
>
>
> The corresponding device for the printer is this:
>
> ulpt0:         class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2> on usbus4
> ulpt0: using bi-directional mode
>
> ugen4.2: 
>        at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
>
> crw-rw  1 root  cups    0, 142 Feb 25 21:42 /dev/ulpt0
>
> I have installed all packages I can imagine:
>
>        cups-1.4.6
>        cups-base-1.4.6_6
>        cups-client-1.4.6
>        cups-image-1.4.6
>        cups-pstoraster-8.15.4_6
>        gutenprint-cups-5.2.4_2
>        foo2zjs-20110609
>        foomatic-db-20090530_2
>        foomatic-db-engine-4.0.7,2
>        gutenprint-foomatic-5.2.4_2
>        foo2zjs-20110609
>
> I also have the CLX-216xsplc.ppd PPD file available
> which I think I'd like to hand over to CUPS somewhere.
>
> ALTERNATIVE: If someone could explain how it's easier
> to make a lpr filter (for the system's printer service),
> I'd also appreciate this.
>
> I've already tried this:
>
>        # foo2xqx-wrapper cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
>        # cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0
>
> It causes the LED of the printer to blink, but nothing is
> printed, even though the printer startes to make sounds
> (involving the print mechanism, but not the sheet feeder).
>
> If I use
>
>        # foo2qpdl-wrapper cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
>        # cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0
>
> the CUPS test page is printed, but not in color (only b/w).
> After looking into the manpage,
>
>        # foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
>        # cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0
>
> makes the printer print properly.
>
> Okay, it works.
>
> How am I supposed to use a PPD file with CUPS when no
> local printer is shown?
>
> I "need" CUPS (or at least my programs seem to think
> that), how should it be done?
>
> Okay, I could make a simple printer filter. I could then
> integrate that with /etc/printcap (as I do with my PCL
> HP Laserjet 4000d). I think it should be possible to code
> that similar to a parallel printer (with ulpt instead
> of lpt device specification for the lp= parameter...
>
> What am I doing wrong? :-)
>
>
>
>
> --

Polytropon

Hope this can help:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=27666

There are many things that could be interfering?

- Create /etc/devfs.rules with the following, which sets the
permissions and associates print devices with the cups group:

[system=10]
add path 'unlpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'ulpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'lpt*' mode 0660 group cups

- Add root and other users to cups group in /etc/group
- Enable CUPS and the above rules at startup by adding these lines to
/etc/rc.conf:

cupsd_enable="YES"
devfs_system_ruleset="system"

Then hopefully the printer shows up in cups http://localhost:631 :)

If none of this works, you may try adding the apsfilter port and use
it to configure the printer?  But see if the above helps.

Regards,


Antonio
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Installing Samsung CLX-2160 color laser printer on USB using CUPS

[Polytropon]

I have a problem installing a Samsung CLX-2160 color
laser printer using CUPS. In the http://localhost:631
web-based configuration, none of the methods that are
supposed to be used for installing a printer works.

The "Add Printer" button leads to this:



Add Printer
---
 Local Printers:
Discovered Network Printers:
 Other Network Printers: o Internet Printing Protocol (http) 
 o Internet Printing Protocol (ipp) 
 o LPD/LPR Host or Printer 
 o AppSocket/HP JetDirect
 [ Continue ]

No local printers can be selected (even though the
printer is connected, switched on and woken up).



And "Find New Printers" shows this:



Available Printers
--
No printers found.



Excellent auto detection. :-)



The corresponding device for the printer is this:

ulpt0:  on usbus4
ulpt0: using bi-directional mode

ugen4.2: 
at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON

crw-rw  1 root  cups0, 142 Feb 25 21:42 /dev/ulpt0

I have installed all packages I can imagine:

    cups-1.4.6
cups-base-1.4.6_6
cups-client-1.4.6
cups-image-1.4.6
cups-pstoraster-8.15.4_6
    gutenprint-cups-5.2.4_2
foo2zjs-20110609
foomatic-db-20090530_2
foomatic-db-engine-4.0.7,2
gutenprint-foomatic-5.2.4_2
foo2zjs-20110609

I also have the CLX-216xsplc.ppd PPD file available
which I think I'd like to hand over to CUPS somewhere.

ALTERNATIVE: If someone could explain how it's easier
to make a lpr filter (for the system's printer service),
I'd also appreciate this.

I've already tried this:

# foo2xqx-wrapper cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0

It causes the LED of the printer to blink, but nothing is
printed, even though the printer startes to make sounds
(involving the print mechanism, but not the sheet feeder).

If I use

# foo2qpdl-wrapper cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0

the CUPS test page is printed, but not in color (only b/w).
After looking into the manpage,

# foo2qpdl-wrapper -p 2 -c cupstest.ps > cupstest.xqx
# cat cupstest.xqx > /dev/ulpt0

makes the printer print properly.

Okay, it works.

How am I supposed to use a PPD file with CUPS when no
local printer is shown?

I "need" CUPS (or at least my programs seem to think
that), how should it be done?

Okay, I could make a simple printer filter. I could then
integrate that with /etc/printcap (as I do with my PCL
HP Laserjet 4000d). I think it should be possible to code
that similar to a parallel printer (with ulpt instead
of lpt device specification for the lp= parameter...

What am I doing wrong? :-)




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Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: CUPS 1.5.2 not working, like to test 1.4.x, how?

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:23:19 +0100
Polytropon  wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:46:52 +0100, Christopher J. Ruwe wrote:
> > Is there any documentation available on how to retrieve old ports
> > from the cvs-attic? I just don't know how, so that I could test my
> > assumption that CUPS 1.4.x should be working for my setup.
> 
> There's a port to do so: portdowngrade. You can use
> it to obtain older versions of a port. 
> 
> (I've been using it successfully to downgrade xzgv
> to a working version.)
> 


Thanks a lot. In my case, it meant finding out that you have to rebuild
INDEX, downgrading the cups-base and cups-client port to 1.4.8 and then
rebuidling the chain. Boiled down to 5m of actual work and some more
waiting for the compile ... I have now cups 1.4.8 and am functional with
a Kyocera 1030D connected via usb.

So, thank you again, hava a nice week, cheers
--
Christopher
TZ GMT +1h 

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Re: CUPS 1.5.2 not working, like to test 1.4.x, how?

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:46:52 +0100, Christopher J. Ruwe wrote:
> Is there any documentation available on how to retrieve old ports from
> the cvs-attic? I just don't know how, so that I could test my assumption
> that CUPS 1.4.x should be working for my setup.

There's a port to do so: portdowngrade. You can use
it to obtain older versions of a port. 

(I've been using it successfully to downgrade xzgv
to a working version.)




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Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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CUPS 1.5.2 not working, like to test 1.4.x, how?

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

I am trying to get CUPS 1.5.2 from ports working with my printer and I
encounter a problem exactly like a bug described in
http://www.cups.org/str.php?L4008, albeit with a Kyocera 1030-D instead of 
a kyocera 2000. In essence, CUPS 1.5.+ is sending corrupted data to some
printers and the remedies suggested by the CUPS-people do not work
... not in his case and neither in mine.

As I cannot get CUPS 1.5.2 to work, I would like to test my assumption
of a buggy 1.5.+ with an older version, preferably 1.4.8 which I have in
a working state with that printer on a Solaris machine.

Is there any documentation available on how to retrieve old ports from
the cvs-attic? I just don't know how, so that I could test my assumption
that CUPS 1.4.x should be working for my setup.

Thanks and cheers,
--
Christopher 
TZ GMT + 1h


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/18/12 00:22, Jerry wrote:

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:14:47 +0100
Polytropon articulated:


Think about that:

% netcat 192.168.123.456<  /tmp/printing.pdf

I can do either:

nc 192.168.1.100 9100<  /tmp/print.pdf

or  nc 192.168.1.100 9100<  /tmp/print.ps

right now without any problems.

If you looked at the

page, and you apparently did, then you will have noticed the "Making
Printing "Just Work"" concept that I suggested several months ago, only
to be met by the usual naysayers claiming it would never happen or be
feasible. Obviously, these are the same individuals who claimed that
the "bumblebee" could not fly.
You realise that you could do this with PS for ages? Nothing has changed 
as such in years...


Finding a printer that accepts PS? That was the problem. Mostly the 
issue is with GDI or some other propietry printer.


If the manufacturers accept a standard (and that means M$ needs to stop 
interfering, which it seems they now are and are moving away from GDI 
themselves) then it will all just work. PCL isn't much different, and 
most respectable printers have been using that since the beginning of 
time, or thereabouts, just more of them now.


You will find it hard to convince graphics to give up PS though, its 
pretty deeply rooted in their culture :)


If you have not all ready checked out
,
you might want to give it a quick once over. It is very informative.



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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/17/12 23:57, Polytropon wrote:

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:33:33 +1000, Da Rock wrote:

PDF is not exactly PS, but it does use a subset of the instructions.

That's correct, but both formats share essential parts of
functionality. Conversion between them is relatively easy.




The other thing you will notice is that its mostly on MFC's, so I
believe they're using the PS chipset to encode a scanned doc to PDF; I'm
not sure it works the other way around, and I may even be wrong about
what they're doing but I think it is very suspect.

Yes, PDF output of scanned documents (even multi-page ones)
seems to be standard today (which is mostly a welcome solution
for storing and re-printing scanned documents).




A PS chipset is only an interpreter - it cannot normally encode PS, only
read a PS stream and rasterise it. But they may have extended it in only
this case. As for printing PDF, maybe... time will only tell.

I held a short lecture about PS many years ago. If I remember
my own words correctly, the PS "circuit" in a printer is a
little processor complex that processes the PS "programming
language" to do rasterization (from vector data or embedded
pixel objects), it could do calculations, some transformations
(like rotation), some other functions (like repeating the
output n times, use or not use the duplexer etc. depending
on the printer's hardware). If this facility could be used
to generate data and send it back through the network interface,
or keep it in local storage so network access can "pick it
up" (e. g. by FTP, NFS, CIFS/SMB), things would be easy as
those mechanisms can be kept internally in the printer without
requiring arbitrary "drivers" to make things work.
RIP processors do/did that. They're normally an external computer system 
designed to do just that: act as a print server (sometimes a bit like 
CUPS with a web interface) and you can store, hold, print jobs. Graphics 
organisations still use them, but since processors are so fast these 
days they don't always bother with some printers.


With these functions, the operator could receive a print job and direct 
it to whatever printer was available/best suited and run it. Some used 
them in the larger print shops for online printing from major contracts 
to automate the processing of jobs (immediate/monthly/weekly, etc).


You could also send the ripped file (or a PS encoded one) anywhere you 
want as well. The files were normally sent RAW and processed on the RIP 
to whatever was needed or wanted, and there was PS on the machine. These 
things were hooked up directly to the printer (no network - could be 
though - just a scsi connection directly to the print engine) so they 
had no real need for PS except to encode it.


The ones I worked on were NT based and some linux based ones. Fun 
times... :)

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:14:47 +0100
Polytropon articulated:

> Think about that:
> 
>   % netcat 192.168.123.456 < /tmp/printing.pdf

I can do either:

nc 192.168.1.100 9100 < /tmp/print.pdf

or  nc 192.168.1.100 9100 < /tmp/print.ps

right now without any problems.

If you looked at the

page, and you apparently did, then you will have noticed the "Making
Printing "Just Work"" concept that I suggested several months ago, only
to be met by the usual naysayers claiming it would never happen or be
feasible. Obviously, these are the same individuals who claimed that
the "bumblebee" could not fly.

If you have not all ready checked out
,
you might want to give it a quick once over. It is very informative.

-- 
Jerry ♔

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
__

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/17/12 23:33, Da Rock wrote:

On 02/17/12 23:14, Polytropon wrote:

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:00:38 -0500, Jerry wrote:

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.

Jerry, I wanted to point out that PS still seems to be the
format that _applications_ use as output format for printing.
Even though especially office applications (such as Abiword
or LibreOffice) have a built-in PDF file generator, the printing
output that is sent to the printing subsystem (lpr, CUPS, whatever)
is in PS format and gets converted to what the printer needs
by the proper printer filter ("driver").

The "print to file" output method typically creates PS, at
least on UNIX, Linux, MacOS X and other operating system
families.

If printers would natively support PDF data instead of unknown
arbitrary commands to move the printing head - things would be
MUCH LESS complicated on the OS's side. Data just needs to be
generated in PDF natively, or converted from PS to PDF (simple
task) by the printer filter, and then just sent to a specific
network address (just as netcat could do). That would nearly
eliminate the need for printer drivers I think. The only thing
that comes to my mind is... how does it handle duplexing and
other printer-HARDWARE specific things? Can they also be "coded"
in a PDF file?

Really, I like the approach of having PDF as a universal "printer
language" (even though it's not 100% safe from a security point
of view, but that doesn't matter on the home consumer market
anyway). It would remove any need complicated things like (in
my opinion) the CUPS configuration. You just need to enter the
IP of the printer - done; and it doesn't even matter of this
is a wired or wireless connection! Maybe even lowest-end USB
devices can accept a PDF "data stream"...

Think about that:

% netcat 192.168.123.456<  /tmp/printing.pdf

or even

% cat /tmp/inkpee.pdf>  /dev/ulpt0

to make the printer start printing...

With standardized PDF "instructions", there would be no need
for artificial OS barriers. PDF is known. No need to port any
drivers, to create wrappers or jump though hoops.

Note that the system's DEFAULT printing facility (the printer
spooler) would be a perfect means to plug in. Printer "filters"
could be easily implemented, i. e. only _one_ filter needs to
be present: one that converts an application's PS to PDF and
the send it to the printer's local port or IP address. All the
parts needed for that task are already present (and have been
for many years).

Would be interesting to see how this develops. Thanks for sharing
that info, sounds really good.
PDF is not exactly PS, but it does use a subset of the instructions. 
As near as I can tell this is how they're using it, as it is only 1.7 
or so onwards.


The other thing you will notice is that its mostly on MFC's, so I 
believe they're using the PS chipset to encode a scanned doc to PDF; 
I'm not sure it works the other way around, and I may even be wrong 
about what they're doing but I think it is very suspect.


A PS chipset is only an interpreter - it cannot normally encode PS, 
only read a PS stream and rasterise it. But they may have extended it 
in only this case. As for printing PDF, maybe... time will only tell.
What I forgot to add is that it would be no more difficult to print PDF 
as it is to print PS - you'd use the same functions but a slight 
difference in the quantity of data. I have yet to see a printer that 
will do it though

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:33:33 +1000, Da Rock wrote:
> PDF is not exactly PS, but it does use a subset of the instructions.

That's correct, but both formats share essential parts of
functionality. Conversion between them is relatively easy.



> The other thing you will notice is that its mostly on MFC's, so I 
> believe they're using the PS chipset to encode a scanned doc to PDF; I'm 
> not sure it works the other way around, and I may even be wrong about 
> what they're doing but I think it is very suspect.

Yes, PDF output of scanned documents (even multi-page ones)
seems to be standard today (which is mostly a welcome solution
for storing and re-printing scanned documents).



> A PS chipset is only an interpreter - it cannot normally encode PS, only 
> read a PS stream and rasterise it. But they may have extended it in only 
> this case. As for printing PDF, maybe... time will only tell.

I held a short lecture about PS many years ago. If I remember
my own words correctly, the PS "circuit" in a printer is a
little processor complex that processes the PS "programming
language" to do rasterization (from vector data or embedded
pixel objects), it could do calculations, some transformations
(like rotation), some other functions (like repeating the
output n times, use or not use the duplexer etc. depending
on the printer's hardware). If this facility could be used
to generate data and send it back through the network interface,
or keep it in local storage so network access can "pick it
up" (e. g. by FTP, NFS, CIFS/SMB), things would be easy as
those mechanisms can be kept internally in the printer without
requiring arbitrary "drivers" to make things work.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/17/12 23:14, Polytropon wrote:

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:00:38 -0500, Jerry wrote:

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.

Jerry, I wanted to point out that PS still seems to be the
format that _applications_ use as output format for printing.
Even though especially office applications (such as Abiword
or LibreOffice) have a built-in PDF file generator, the printing
output that is sent to the printing subsystem (lpr, CUPS, whatever)
is in PS format and gets converted to what the printer needs
by the proper printer filter ("driver").

The "print to file" output method typically creates PS, at
least on UNIX, Linux, MacOS X and other operating system
families.

If printers would natively support PDF data instead of unknown
arbitrary commands to move the printing head - things would be
MUCH LESS complicated on the OS's side. Data just needs to be
generated in PDF natively, or converted from PS to PDF (simple
task) by the printer filter, and then just sent to a specific
network address (just as netcat could do). That would nearly
eliminate the need for printer drivers I think. The only thing
that comes to my mind is... how does it handle duplexing and
other printer-HARDWARE specific things? Can they also be "coded"
in a PDF file?

Really, I like the approach of having PDF as a universal "printer
language" (even though it's not 100% safe from a security point
of view, but that doesn't matter on the home consumer market
anyway). It would remove any need complicated things like (in
my opinion) the CUPS configuration. You just need to enter the
IP of the printer - done; and it doesn't even matter of this
is a wired or wireless connection! Maybe even lowest-end USB
devices can accept a PDF "data stream"...

Think about that:

% netcat 192.168.123.456<  /tmp/printing.pdf

or even

% cat /tmp/inkpee.pdf>  /dev/ulpt0

to make the printer start printing...

With standardized PDF "instructions", there would be no need
for artificial OS barriers. PDF is known. No need to port any
drivers, to create wrappers or jump though hoops.

Note that the system's DEFAULT printing facility (the printer
spooler) would be a perfect means to plug in. Printer "filters"
could be easily implemented, i. e. only _one_ filter needs to
be present: one that converts an application's PS to PDF and
the send it to the printer's local port or IP address. All the
parts needed for that task are already present (and have been
for many years).

Would be interesting to see how this develops. Thanks for sharing
that info, sounds really good.
PDF is not exactly PS, but it does use a subset of the instructions. As 
near as I can tell this is how they're using it, as it is only 1.7 or so 
onwards.


The other thing you will notice is that its mostly on MFC's, so I 
believe they're using the PS chipset to encode a scanned doc to PDF; I'm 
not sure it works the other way around, and I may even be wrong about 
what they're doing but I think it is very suspect.


A PS chipset is only an interpreter - it cannot normally encode PS, only 
read a PS stream and rasterise it. But they may have extended it in only 
this case. As for printing PDF, maybe... time will only tell.

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:00:38 -0500, Jerry wrote:
> 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.

Jerry, I wanted to point out that PS still seems to be the
format that _applications_ use as output format for printing.
Even though especially office applications (such as Abiword
or LibreOffice) have a built-in PDF file generator, the printing
output that is sent to the printing subsystem (lpr, CUPS, whatever)
is in PS format and gets converted to what the printer needs
by the proper printer filter ("driver").

The "print to file" output method typically creates PS, at
least on UNIX, Linux, MacOS X and other operating system
families.

If printers would natively support PDF data instead of unknown
arbitrary commands to move the printing head - things would be
MUCH LESS complicated on the OS's side. Data just needs to be
generated in PDF natively, or converted from PS to PDF (simple
task) by the printer filter, and then just sent to a specific
network address (just as netcat could do). That would nearly
eliminate the need for printer drivers I think. The only thing
that comes to my mind is... how does it handle duplexing and
other printer-HARDWARE specific things? Can they also be "coded"
in a PDF file?

Really, I like the approach of having PDF as a universal "printer
language" (even though it's not 100% safe from a security point
of view, but that doesn't matter on the home consumer market
anyway). It would remove any need complicated things like (in
my opinion) the CUPS configuration. You just need to enter the
IP of the printer - done; and it doesn't even matter of this
is a wired or wireless connection! Maybe even lowest-end USB
devices can accept a PDF "data stream"...

Think about that:

% netcat 192.168.123.456 < /tmp/printing.pdf

or even

% cat /tmp/inkpee.pdf > /dev/ulpt0

to make the printer start printing...

With standardized PDF "instructions", there would be no need
for artificial OS barriers. PDF is known. No need to port any
drivers, to create wrappers or jump though hoops.

Note that the system's DEFAULT printing facility (the printer
spooler) would be a perfect means to plug in. Printer "filters"
could be easily implemented, i. e. only _one_ filter needs to
be present: one that converts an application's PS to PDF and
the send it to the printer's local port or IP address. All the
parts needed for that task are already present (and have been
for many years).

Would be interesting to see how this develops. Thanks for sharing
that info, sounds really good.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

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!).

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Jerry]

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:
.
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 ♔

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

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 "\033&k2G" | 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

Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Jerry]

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 "\033&k2G" | 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.
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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Polytropon]

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 "\033&k2G" | 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...



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: print/cups: CUPS-1.5.0 IPP protocoll issues -> no printing possible on IPP capable network printers

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2012, Da Rock wrote:


I was wondering if this "patch", whatever the Ubuntu fellows patched,
couldn't be introduced to FreeBSD's CUPS port.

Well, sorry about my impatience, but I'm floating like a dead man in the
water, since I have to prepare printouts for a conference and printing
is some kind of "neurological point" around here.

I know the feeling- try it with network (wifi particularly...) :)

What models out of curiosity? Have you tried other models?


The short-term solution is to print to a PostScript or PCL file, then 
copy the file over the network to the printer.  HP printers accept files 
on port 9100 (use nc(1)), via lpd or FTP, numerous other ways.


Longer-term, it depends.  If the added features of CUPS are worth the 
fragility, live with it.  If not, use lpd/lpr:

  http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html

Use of nc(1) with HP printers is also shown there.
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Re: print/cups: CUPS-1.5.0 IPP protocoll issues -> no printing possible on IPP capable network printers

[Da Rock]

On 02/07/12 18:40, O. Hartmann wrote:

We use a bunch of HP and Xerox printers across our network, all capable
of being accessed via network over IPP protocoall (so they claim).

Printing worked for me  flawless on FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE, 9.0-CURRENT, now
9.0-STABLE on all boxes in question. Since updating cups to revision
1.5.0 (this is the most recent port version and I recently
updated/recompiled the port and dependencies for all parts of CUPS
either with CLANG and GCC 4.2.1), I get massive problems accessing
printers on the network.

Most HP printers accept a print job, but after accepting, CUPS reports
printer has been stopped, can not obtain printer status. The job remains
in the queue. Then I "restart" printer via CUPS, print job gets printed,
but immediateley after printing has finished, the same problem occurs
again: printer stopped - can not get printer status. Job remains still
in the queue. Restarting printer via CUPS will start the game again,
with the result of printing endless the same job, first in queue. I have
to check whether the printer indeed has printed the job, delete the
first queue entry, restart the printer again to get next job started ...
and so on.

A similar game on the Xerox printer facility. The printer reports
"Unablae to get printer status", printing is here impossible!

The XEROX printer is now attached to a Linux print server box running
CUPS, an older CUPS on something like CentOS, I do not know what crap is
running on the hardware. But: the printer works fine with older CUPS!

Digging the internet revealed an issue reported in an Ubuntu forum/list,
I already filed a PR (ports/164759). The Ubuntu report is about to be
found here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/877958

I was wondering if this "patch", whatever the Ubuntu fellows patched,
couldn't be introduced to FreeBSD's CUPS port.

Well, sorry about my impatience, but I'm floating like a dead man in the
water, since I have to prepare printouts for a conference and printing
is some kind of "neurological point" around here.

I know the feeling- try it with network (wifi particularly...) :)

What models out of curiosity? Have you tried other models?

As for the patch situation: try the maintainer of cups port, but that 
does require a wait of about 2 weeks (doesn't sound like you can wait) 
so perhaps try ports@. Or both cc'ing ports@...


HTH
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print/cups: CUPS-1.5.0 IPP protocoll issues -> no printing possible on IPP capable network printers

[O. Hartmann]

We use a bunch of HP and Xerox printers across our network, all capable
of being accessed via network over IPP protocoall (so they claim).

Printing worked for me  flawless on FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE, 9.0-CURRENT, now
9.0-STABLE on all boxes in question. Since updating cups to revision
1.5.0 (this is the most recent port version and I recently
updated/recompiled the port and dependencies for all parts of CUPS
either with CLANG and GCC 4.2.1), I get massive problems accessing
printers on the network.

Most HP printers accept a print job, but after accepting, CUPS reports
printer has been stopped, can not obtain printer status. The job remains
in the queue. Then I "restart" printer via CUPS, print job gets printed,
but immediateley after printing has finished, the same problem occurs
again: printer stopped - can not get printer status. Job remains still
in the queue. Restarting printer via CUPS will start the game again,
with the result of printing endless the same job, first in queue. I have
to check whether the printer indeed has printed the job, delete the
first queue entry, restart the printer again to get next job started ...
and so on.

A similar game on the Xerox printer facility. The printer reports
"Unablae to get printer status", printing is here impossible!

The XEROX printer is now attached to a Linux print server box running
CUPS, an older CUPS on something like CentOS, I do not know what crap is
running on the hardware. But: the printer works fine with older CUPS!

Digging the internet revealed an issue reported in an Ubuntu forum/list,
I already filed a PR (ports/164759). The Ubuntu report is about to be
found here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/877958

I was wondering if this "patch", whatever the Ubuntu fellows patched,
couldn't be introduced to FreeBSD's CUPS port.

Well, sorry about my impatience, but I'm floating like a dead man in the
water, since I have to prepare printouts for a conference and printing
is some kind of "neurological point" around here.

Thanks for your patience ...

Regards,
Oliver



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/06/12 22:21, Jerry wrote:

On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:21:59 +0100
Ouyang Xueyu articulated:


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?

I have the same problem with a different Brother printer. I have used
every PPD file I could fine including the one from new Win7 machine.

You did not state what program(s) you are attempting to print from. If
given the option, choose the LPR option in the menu. It works for me.

I have supplied every piece of information I could find on this problem
to the CUPS people without getting any useful results. It seems, and
this is just a guess -- but a good one in my opinion -- that it is a
FreeBSD phenomenon. Brother does supply driver setups for Linux but
that is about it.

Good luck, I just plan gave up. The time and trouble involved in
getting it to work was simply not worth the effort involved. By the
way, what CUPS version?

If you can supply the debug info then we can have a crack at what 
exactly is happening.


Personally I come from the print industry and have significant 
experience with printers and drivers (and other factors), I'm sure there 
are others in the same position. The more information there is 
available, the more eyes on it, and the sooner a fix could come along.

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Jerry]

On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:21:59 +0100
Ouyang Xueyu articulated:

> 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?

I have the same problem with a different Brother printer. I have used
every PPD file I could fine including the one from new Win7 machine.

You did not state what program(s) you are attempting to print from. If
given the option, choose the LPR option in the menu. It works for me.

I have supplied every piece of information I could find on this problem
to the CUPS people without getting any useful results. It seems, and
this is just a guess -- but a good one in my opinion -- that it is a
FreeBSD phenomenon. Brother does supply driver setups for Linux but
that is about it.

Good luck, I just plan gave up. The time and trouble involved in
getting it to work was simply not worth the effort involved. By the
way, what CUPS version?

-- 
Jerry ♔

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Re: MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Da Rock]

On 02/06/12 06:21, 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?
Only one thing for it- turn on debug in the config. If you still can't 
see the problem then post the output here, but there's not much else we 
can say yet without it.


HTH
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MFC 7840W under CUPS

[Ouyang Xueyu]

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?

X.

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Re: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Sergio de Almeida Lenzi]

Em Qui, 2011-12-08 às 10:40 -0600, Ryan Coleman escreveu:

> I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to charge 
> me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking at another 
> solution, if possible: CUPS.
> 
> I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office here 
> that people would love to be able to print from… but AirPrint requires an 
> IPP-compatible printer.
> 
> Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
> 
> --
> Ryan
> 

I used to install a freebsd machine in the network
than install cups, and install a PPD file for that 
printer (in the attach) configure & run cups.

pint 
*PPD-Adobe: "4.3"
*%
*% For information on using this, and to obtain the required backend
*% script, consult http://www.openprinting.org/
*%
*% This file is published under the GNU General Public License
*%
*% PPD-O-MATIC (4.0.0 or newer) generated this PPD file. It is for use with 
*% all programs and environments which use PPD files for dealing with
*% printer capability information. The printer must be configured with the
*% "foomatic-rip" backend filter script of Foomatic 4.0.0 or newer. This 
*% file and "foomatic-rip" work together to support PPD-controlled printer
*% driver option access with all supported printer drivers and printing
*% spoolers.
*%
*% To save this file on your disk, wait until the download has completed
*% (the animation of the browser logo must stop) and then use the
*% "Save as..." command in the "File" menu of your browser or in the 
*% pop-up manu when you click on this document with the right mouse button.
*% DO NOT cut and paste this file into an editor with your mouse. This can
*% introduce additional line breaks which lead to unexpected results.
*%
*% You may save this file as 'Generic-PCL_6_PCL_XL_Printer-pxlcolor.ppd'
*%
*%
*FormatVersion: "4.3"
*FileVersion:   "1.1"
*LanguageVersion: English 
*LanguageEncoding: ISOLatin1
*PCFileName:"PXLCOLOR.PPD"
*Manufacturer:  "Generic"
*Product:   "(PCL 6/PCL XL Printer)"
*cupsVersion:   1.0
*cupsManualCopies: True
*cupsModelNumber:  2
*cupsFilter:"application/vnd.cups-postscript 100 foomatic-rip"
*cupsFilter:"application/vnd.cups-pdf 0 foomatic-rip"
*%pprRIP:foomatic-rip other
*ModelName: "Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer"
*ShortNickName: "Gener. PCL 6/PCL XL P. pxlcolor"
*NickName:  "Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic/pxlcolor (recommended)"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 550"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 651"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 652"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 653"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 704"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 705"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 800"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 815"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 850"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 860"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 861"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 862"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 863"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 864"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 870"
*LanguageLevel: "3"
*ColorDevice:   True
*DefaultColorSpace: RGB
*FileSystem:False
*Throughput:"1"
*LandscapeOrientation: Plus90
*TTRasterizer:  Type42
*1284DeviceID: "DRV:Dpxlcolor,R1,M0,F1,P0,TG;"

*driverName pxlcolor: ""
*driverType G/Ghostscript built-in: ""
*driverUrl: "http://www.ghostscript.com/";
*driverObsolete: False
*driverManufacturerSupplied: False
*driverFreeSoftware: True

*DefaultResolution: 1200dpi



*HWMargins: 18 36 18 36
*VariablePaperSize: True
*MaxMediaWidth: 10
*MaxMediaHeight: 10
*NonUIOrderDependency: 100 AnySetup *CustomPageSize
*CustomPageSize True: "pop pop pop pop pop
%% FoomaticRIPOptionSetting: PageSize=Custom"
*End
*FoomaticRIPOptionSetting PageSize=Custom: " -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=0 -dD&&
EVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=0"
*End
*ParamCustomPageSize Width: 1 points 36 10
*ParamCustomPageSize Height: 2 points 36 10
*ParamCustomPageSize Orientation: 3 int 0 0
*ParamCustomPageSize WidthOffset: 4 points 0 0
*ParamCustomPageSize HeightOffset: 5 points 0 0

*FoomaticIDs: Generic-PCL_6_PCL_XL_Printer pxlcolor
*FoomaticRIPCommandLine: "gs -q -dBATCH -dPARANOIDSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dNO&&
INTERPOLATE%B%A%Z -sOutputFile=- -"
*End

*OpenGroup: General/General

*OpenUI *PrintoutMode/Print Quality: PickOne
*FoomaticRIPOption PrintoutMode: enum Composite A
*OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *PrintoutMode
*DefaultPrintoutMode: Normal.Gray
*PrintoutMode Draft/Draft: "%% FoomaticRIPOptionSetting: PrintoutMode=Draft"
*FoomaticRIPOptionSetting PrintoutMode=Draft: "PrinterResolution=600x6&&
00dpi 

RE: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Patrick Mahan]

>-Original Message-
>From: Ryan Coleman [mailto:edi...@d3photography.com]
>Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 9:24 AM
>To: Patrick Mahan
>Cc: FreeBSD Questions
>Subject: Re: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>
>Definitely Postscript.
>

With CUPS, I'm don't remember off the top of my head, but I believe there is a 
way
to create a "text only" queue.  You might want to setup a box with CUPS and use 
that
to act as an "intermediary" for the iOS devices.

Patrick

Patrick Mahan
Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
Adara Networks
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of the 
author and are not to be
construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.

>On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:59 AM, Patrick Mahan wrote:
>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
>>> questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Coleman
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:41 AM
>>> To: FreeBSD Questions
>>> Subject: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>>>
>>> I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to
>>> charge me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking
>at
>>> another solution, if possible: CUPS.
>>>
>>> I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office
>here
>>> that people would love to be able to print from... but AirPrint requires
>an
>>> IPP-compatible printer.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ryan
>>>
>>
>> Ryan,
>>
>> I use JetDirect with my Apple devices.  I print to a HP OfficeJet 7310
>all-in-one
>> with no problems.
>>
>> I had and older HP Color inkjet (930?) that was hooked up for a while to a
>Fedora
>> Core box that was using LPD that worked as well.
>>
>> Patrick
>> 
>> Patrick Mahan
>> Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
>> Adara Networks
>> Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of
>the author and are not to be
>> construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.
>> ___
>> 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"

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RE: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Patrick Mahan]

>-Original Message-
>From: Ryan Coleman [mailto:edi...@d3photography.com]
>Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 9:03 AM
>To: Patrick Mahan
>Cc: FreeBSD Questions
>Subject: Re: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>
>I keep getting garbage text when I connect to my Lanier here at work... an
>LD520C.
>
>I used to be able to print to it but never in color... not the end of the
>world but I want to be able to print to it again.
>
>On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:59 AM, Patrick Mahan wrote:
>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
>>> questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Coleman
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:41 AM
>>> To: FreeBSD Questions
>>> Subject: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>>>
>>> I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to
>>> charge me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking
>at
>>> another solution, if possible: CUPS.
>>>
>>> I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office
>here
>>> that people would love to be able to print from... but AirPrint requires
>an
>>> IPP-compatible printer.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ryan
>>>
>>
>> Ryan,
>>
>> I use JetDirect with my Apple devices.  I print to a HP OfficeJet 7310
>all-in-one
>> with no problems.
>>
>> I had and older HP Color inkjet (930?) that was hooked up for a while to a
>Fedora
>> Core box that was using LPD that worked as well.
>>

Ryan,

What does the garbage text look like?  PCL?  or Postscript?  I'm not familiar 
with
the Lanier printers.

Patrick

Patrick Mahan
Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
Adara Networks
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of the 
author and are not to be
construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.

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Re: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Ryan Coleman]

Definitely Postscript.

On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:59 AM, Patrick Mahan wrote:

>> -Original Message-
>> From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
>> questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Coleman
>> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:41 AM
>> To: FreeBSD Questions
>> Subject: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>> 
>> I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to
>> charge me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking at
>> another solution, if possible: CUPS.
>> 
>> I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office here
>> that people would love to be able to print from... but AirPrint requires an
>> IPP-compatible printer.
>> 
>> Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
>> 
>> --
>> Ryan
>> 
> 
> Ryan,
> 
> I use JetDirect with my Apple devices.  I print to a HP OfficeJet 7310 
> all-in-one
> with no problems.
> 
> I had and older HP Color inkjet (930?) that was hooked up for a while to a 
> Fedora
> Core box that was using LPD that worked as well.
> 
> Patrick
> 
> Patrick Mahan
> Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
> Adara Networks
> Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of the 
> author and are not to be
> construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.
> ___
> 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"

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RE: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Patrick Mahan]

>-Original Message-
>From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
>questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Coleman
>Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:41 AM
>To: FreeBSD Questions
>Subject: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>
>I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to
>charge me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking at
>another solution, if possible: CUPS.
>
>I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office here
>that people would love to be able to print from... but AirPrint requires an
>IPP-compatible printer.
>
>Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
>
>--
>Ryan
>

Ryan,

I use JetDirect with my Apple devices.  I print to a HP OfficeJet 7310 
all-in-one
with no problems.

I had and older HP Color inkjet (930?) that was hooked up for a while to a 
Fedora
Core box that was using LPD that worked as well.

Patrick

Patrick Mahan
Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
Adara Networks
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of the 
author and are not to be
construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.
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Re: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Ryan Coleman]

I keep getting garbage text when I connect to my Lanier here at work… an LD520C.

I used to be able to print to it but never in color… not the end of the world 
but I want to be able to print to it again.

On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:59 AM, Patrick Mahan wrote:

>> -Original Message-
>> From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
>> questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Coleman
>> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:41 AM
>> To: FreeBSD Questions
>> Subject: CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD
>> 
>> I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to
>> charge me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking at
>> another solution, if possible: CUPS.
>> 
>> I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office here
>> that people would love to be able to print from... but AirPrint requires an
>> IPP-compatible printer.
>> 
>> Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?
>> 
>> --
>> Ryan
>> 
> 
> Ryan,
> 
> I use JetDirect with my Apple devices.  I print to a HP OfficeJet 7310 
> all-in-one
> with no problems.
> 
> I had and older HP Color inkjet (930?) that was hooked up for a while to a 
> Fedora
> Core box that was using LPD that worked as well.
> 
> Patrick
> 
> Patrick Mahan
> Lead Technical Kernel Engineer
> Adara Networks
> Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely the responsibility of the 
> author and are not to be
> construed as an official opinion of Adara Networks.

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CUPS and IPP/JD/LPD

[Ryan Coleman]

I have a printer that doesn't support IPP. The leasing agency wants to charge 
me $1400 to "install" the Postcript driver on it but I'm looking at another 
solution, if possible: CUPS.

I have a MacBook and we have a number of iOS devices around the office here 
that people would love to be able to print from… but AirPrint requires an 
IPP-compatible printer.

Is there a way to convert or translate IPP to either LPD or JetDirect?

--
Ryan

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qt4-cups

[ajtiM]

I decided to install FreeBSD 9.0 RC-2. I like to have KDE4 as I have now and 
my question is: Do I need to have in the make.conf still
QT4_OPTIONS=CUPS

Thank you.

Mitja

http://jpgmag.com/people/lumiwa
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No color on CUPS

[James Colannino]

Hey everyone,

I hope this is FreeBSD-specific enough for this list...  Ever since 
moving to FreeBSD, I haven't been able to use color on my color 
laserjet.  I've tried selecting just about every color laserjet model 
from the web interface to CUPS that I can think of, and the only color 
models available are grayscale and inverted grayscale.  I was always 
able to get color no problem on my Linux box.  I know there's something 
stupid that I'm missing, but I'm not really knowledgeable about CUPS, 
much less CUPS on FreeBSD.


Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you fix it?  Thanks 
so much!


James
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 386, Issue 9, Message: 5
On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 07:28:24 -0400 Jerry  wrote:
 > On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT)
 > Robert Bonomi articulated:
 > 
 > > Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
 > > denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on
 > > the matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some
 > > degree held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist
 > > mind-set. You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_
 > > them.  
 > > 
 > > BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
 > > product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the
 > > outside.
 > 
 > Once again your argument is pathetic. Microsoft has been held legally
 > responsible by laws written to curtail the robber barons (railroad &
 > oil) of the 19 and early 20th century.) Of course the EC, or is that
 > the USSREC, strongly backed (pushed) by Opera, a maker of a web browser
 > so pathetic that in two years a new upstart, "Chrome" actually has a
 > larger market share, led a fight to curtail Microsoft's market share.

Actually, it was to curtail modern-day robber barons destroying their 
competition by the usual raft of monopolistic and anti-competitive 
techniques, but let's roll on through your gloriously OTT troll ..

 > This is Fascism at its best. A totally free and open market is the best
 > way to insure the survival of the fittest. Of course socialists cannot
 > survive in that environment and rush off to find ways of getting
 > governments involved in protecting their turf.

Calling everyone who finds Microsoft's predatory behaviours 'socialist' 
(let alone 'fascist') and wrongly reducing to absurdity Darwin's theory 
to this primitive 'survival of the fittest' mantra is counterproductive 
to your usual function of participating in this list to sow bulk FUD on 
behalf of Microsoft.  If I were Bill, you'd get no $points for this one.

 > I have absolutely no problem with holding Microsoft legally responsible
 > when they release a product with a bug or security flaw. However, this
 > must be enforced across the board and against every entity that
 > releases software irregardless of its price. It should probably even
 > include "port maintainers" who release defective ports. Lets be honest,
 > if that is even possible for a socialist like yourself, that if you
 > want to go down that road then lets go -- all the way.

Microsoft would love that.  They can pay fines out of the coffee and 
biscuit jar without blinking, while non-behemoths would be bankrupt.  
You would no doubt find this fair enough; survival of the fattest.

 > Microsoft's very existence depends on its ability to create an
 > operating system that allows users to fully use programming and devices
 > that they choose to deploy. If they cannot achieve that goal then they
 > die, or else have a market share equivalent to FreeBSD, virtually
 > undetectable. Microsoft has done a fairly good job of that. FreeBSD,
 > an the other non-windows operating systems, have not achieved that
 > goal although a few forward thinking developers like those associated
 > with Ubuntu have made huge strides in that direction.

You are mistaken if you think the raison d'etre of FreeBSD is, or ever 
has been, or ever will be, to achieve Microsoft's goals of a system so 
simple (albeit by obfuscation of complexity) that even a fool can use 
it, aimed at a mass consumer market.  You are wrong if you see FreeBSD, 
or the other BSDs, or other unix-based or unix-inspired systems (apart 
from Apple and a few more reactionary Linux advocates) as 'competing' in 
the same 'market' as Microsoft.

 > When it comes to
 > technological advances, FreeBSD is at the bottom of the list. It is
 > there primarily because of people who are simply willing to accept
 > inferiority as the norm.

Microsoft's list, for sure.  So transparent, Jerry.

 > I know I piss people off by my style of
 > writing. I am just not the sort of person, a socialist primarily, who
 > bends over and takes it up the ass everyday rather than say "ENOUGH,
 > lets fix this friggin mess." You cannot even get a decent "N - protocol"
 > wireless device, or even a not so decent one for that matter, to work
 > on FreeBSD while the rest of the world has had working solutions for 5
 > years. What the hell are they waiting for -- the second coming of the
 > invisible man in the sky? Friggin PATHETIC. However, our esteemed
 > leadership has managed to bump the version numbers from at least 6 to
 > the soon to be 9 and we still have no working solution for an easy
 > method of securing and installing printer drivers, or any drivers for
 > that matter. Having to modify obscure system files and settings to get
 > a simple sound card to work is always a PLUS. Pathetically enough, there
 > are users who do actually feel that way.

Apart from yourself, for obvious reasons, people who 

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:48:08 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:59:58 +0100
> C. P. Ghost articulated:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Jerry  wrote:
> > > The biggest loser in this is FreeBSD itself. Virtually any new PC or
> > > laptop, with the exception of the bargain basement brands, and even
> > > some of them are exempt, now come with "N" protocol wireless
> > > devices.
> > 
> > Instead of devoting so much time and energy whining about the
> > problem here on-list, even though you know full well that we can't
> > do anything about it for known reasons... why won't you lobby the
> > manufacturers of "N" devices, so that they either open their specs,
> > so we can write a driver, or at least release binary blobs compatible
> > with FreeBSD? Wouldn't that be more productive? You're very
> > outspoken on some aspects, so put that rhetorical skill to good use
> > and contact the major wireless chipset vendors; and then follow up
> > with them if you don't get the reply you want, just as you do here
> > on-list.
> 
> Seriously, are you so naive that you believe that his is the only
> venue I use to express my feeling on these matters? I have been
> pestering several corporations for over two years now. I have even
> spoken to several of their representatives, including a developer from
> Brother recently in regards to making drivers easily available to
> operating systems other than Microsoft, and usually a few flavors of
> Linux. The contact I had at Brother was actually a Linux user himself.

Actually, Jerry has a point here. The N networking devices
have similarities with "modern" printers in this regards.
While developing compatible "intelligency" in the devices
itself is a cost factor of O(n), moving this "intelligency"
to software is O(1).

For those not familiar with my abuse of the O notation:

O(n) means linear: The more devices are produced, the more
chips need to be made. In case of printers, those chips
control paper feed and ink pee, as well as scanner,
imaging, local buffer storage, data transfer and so on.

O(1) means constant: Only one set of driver will have to
be developed, one for each "Windows" product line and
architecture that's intended to be supported. The whole
"intelligence" is in there, and data transfered to the
device will control it directly, maybe even unbuffered.

>From a business point of view, investing O(1) in development
vs. getting O(n) revenue sounds very interesting.

What I said regarding printer devices seems to apply to
wireless networking too. The cheaper the better. There
is no intention of continued use in there, as this does
not benefit sales. If hardware could be re-used, what
reason would home consumers (main target area!) have
to buy something new that basically provides the same
functionality?

The more unit sales, the lower the price, and therefore
a wider-spread product spectrum. Of course, the downside
is that the possibilities of use are limited, but again,
that's what customers have been trained to require.



> One company, I believe it was Cisco, told me that FreeBSD
> does not support the system calls it needs to make its devices work
> correctly. I am not a system engineer and since he was talking above my
> head I just let it go.

It _may_ be possible that Cisco depends on "Linuxisms"
here, maybe things like *64() calls, like fstat64() vs. fstat().
I'm not a Cisco engineer, so this is just a very wild
guess. "Doesn't have it" may refer to advanced technology
as well as to legacy one.



> As for releasing technical details, etcetera, I was told point blank
> that such information was confidential and would not be released. Now
> that I can at least agree with.

Of course, it is their right to do so, will all the
implications. The confidentiality could also be a means
to hide the fact that devices come with planned
obsolescence or are intended to spy at users (such
as it is quite easily possible with "Windows" and
a webcam). Other reasons could be secret contracts
with companies or governments for a "data exchange",
you're getting the idea. But as this cannot be proven
properly at the moment, just leave this point mentioned
as is.



> Unlike many socialists, I don't believe
> in working my ass off, spending X amount of dollars and then just giving
> my work away freely to every dirt bag to clone.

If this is not your attitude, well, fine, and fully
okay. However this is not everyones attitude as
some want to improve computers and operating systems
for free, as they see it a chance to do something FOR
the society.

The possibility to "make money" with tools provided
for free is a thing of licensing. You know that FreeBSD
allows its users to create own products with it, even
turn _them_ into something proprietary and then sell
them. This is a good idea from a CAPITALIST point of
view, i. e. take it for 0, sell it for $$$. And why
not? Because the licensing terms don't prohibit it.
This is also a chance for innovation, for individu

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:59:58 +0100
C. P. Ghost articulated:

> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Jerry  wrote:
> > The biggest loser in this is FreeBSD itself. Virtually any new PC or
> > laptop, with the exception of the bargain basement brands, and even
> > some of them are exempt, now come with "N" protocol wireless
> > devices.
> 
> Instead of devoting so much time and energy whining about the
> problem here on-list, even though you know full well that we can't
> do anything about it for known reasons... why won't you lobby the
> manufacturers of "N" devices, so that they either open their specs,
> so we can write a driver, or at least release binary blobs compatible
> with FreeBSD? Wouldn't that be more productive? You're very
> outspoken on some aspects, so put that rhetorical skill to good use
> and contact the major wireless chipset vendors; and then follow up
> with them if you don't get the reply you want, just as you do here
> on-list.

Seriously, are you so naive that you believe that his is the only
venue I use to express my feeling on these matters? I have been
pestering several corporations for over two years now. I have even
spoken to several of their representatives, including a developer from
Brother recently in regards to making drivers easily available to
operating systems other than Microsoft, and usually a few flavors of
Linux. The contact I had at Brother was actually a Linux user himself.

In all cases, no matter what the device I was inquiring about was, the
standard answer was that they -- meaning the OEM -- could not see any
upside to investing in the development and maintenance of drivers for a
community as fragmented as the non-windows frontier. A few actually
told me to use Linux instead since they did offer some support for that
architecture. One company, I believe it was Cisco, told me that FreeBSD
does not support the system calls it needs to make its devices work
correctly. I am not a system engineer and since he was talking above my
head I just let it go. However, considering that nVidia had to wait
years for FreeBSD to mature enough for it to get its drivers functional
under this environment I can easily believe that there is more than a
grain of truth to the statement.

As for releasing technical details, etcetera, I was told point blank
that such information was confidential and would not be released. Now
that I can at least agree with. Unlike many socialists, I don't believe
in working my ass off, spending X amount of dollars and then just giving
my work away freely to every dirt bag to clone.

I write several major vendors on a monthly basic. Sometimes even using
different names so they might falsely believe that there is a larger
base than actually exists to request support. Now, suppose you were to
join me. Perhaps a few thousand other users, in other words all the
FreeBSD base, and wrote on a bi-weekly schedule to a targeted vendor
base requesting support. I will be happy to supply my own personal list
and compile other pertinent vendor's names & address's as well.

The only problem I see with this approach is maintaining continued group
support. The tendency of people to just give up and quite is self
evident. Now, as you might have noticed I don't suffer from that trait.
It is the primary difference between an Alpha male and one who just
bends over and takes it.

In any event Ghost, contact me if you want to help, just don't expect to
get any followers.


-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or ignored.
Do not CC this poster. Please do not ignore the "Reply-To" header.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[C. P. Ghost]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Jerry  wrote:
> The biggest loser in this is FreeBSD itself. Virtually any new PC or
> laptop, with the exception of the bargain basement brands, and even
> some of them are exempt, now come with "N" protocol wireless devices.

Instead of devoting so much time and energy whining about the
problem here on-list, even though you know full well that we can't
do anything about it for known reasons... why won't you lobby the
manufacturers of "N" devices, so that they either open their specs,
so we can write a driver, or at least release binary blobs compatible
with FreeBSD? Wouldn't that be more productive? You're very
outspoken on some aspects, so put that rhetorical skill to good use
and contact the major wireless chipset vendors; and then follow up
with them if you don't get the reply you want, just as you do here
on-list.

-cpghost.

-- 
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 08:25:11 +
Frank Shute articulated:

> On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 07:28:24AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
> >
> > You cannot even get a decent "N - protocol" wireless device, or even
> > a not so decent one for that matter, to work on FreeBSD while the
> > rest of the world has had working solutions for 5 years. What the
> > hell are they waiting for -- the second coming of the invisible man
> > in the sky? Friggin PATHETIC. 
> 
> IEEE 802.11n-2009 was only published 2 years ago.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009#Timeline
> 
> Can we have enough of you whining about no "n"? Thanks.

I was using the early "draft" 'N' protocol devices 5 years ago.
Obviously not in a FreeBSD environment. The time to start planning for
change is not when it slams you in the face, but rather anticipating it
and being prepared. There is no way any individual can claim that they
were not aware this was happening. Now, as you pointed out 
"IEEE 802.11n-2009 was only published 2 years ago". So what is your
point --  that we should wait another 5 years before addressing the
problem? I am serious here; give me a time frame. Then post it on the
FreeBSD web site so potential users will be aware of this deficiency.
Or perhaps it is your belief that we should skip over this protocol
entirely and wait until the "Q" or whatever letter is designated
protocol is released. After all, it just stands to reason that at some
time in the future someone will devise a faster and/or more secure
method of wireless transmission.

The biggest loser in this is FreeBSD itself. Virtually any new PC or
laptop, with the exception of the bargain basement brands, and even
some of them are exempt, now come with "N" protocol wireless devices.
Any user who purchases one of these devices and plans on employing a
wireless network finds him/her self at a disadvantage. Their options
are to use a better OS, or buy and install a cheap "G" protocol device.
That is like buying a new car and slapping a ten year old motor in it.

I actually up to a few years ago had three FreeBSD machines hooked up
on my network not counting three separate laptops. I now only have one
machine because of the lack of suitable drivers. Once I get ambitious
this spring and rip out the last vestiges of hard wiring, that unit will
be gone too if drivers aren't available. Then I might try Ubuntu. Their
developers apparently do care about their user base.


-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Frank Shute]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 07:28:24AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
>
> You cannot even get a decent "N - protocol" wireless device, or even
> a not so decent one for that matter, to work on FreeBSD while the
> rest of the world has had working solutions for 5 years. What the
> hell are they waiting for -- the second coming of the invisible man
> in the sky? Friggin PATHETIC. 

IEEE 802.11n-2009 was only published 2 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009#Timeline

Can we have enough of you whining about no "n"? Thanks.


Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html




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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Robert Bonomi]

> From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Sat Oct 29 06:29:33 2011
> Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 07:28:24 -0400
> From: Jerry 
> To: FreeBSD 
> Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS
>
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT)
> Robert Bonomi articulated:
>
> > Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
> > denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on
> > the matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some
> > degree held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist
> > mind-set. You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_
> > them.  
> > 
> > BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
> > product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the
> > outside.
>
> Once again your argument is pathetic.

What argument is that?   That you are trying to impose _your_ standards on
on the world?  That you would deny people the freedom to make up their
own minds about whether they want vendor liability, versus accepting that
risk for themselves?

> This discussion has gone on long enough and I am already bored by it.

[drivelectomy -- ad hominems, and fact-free ranting removed]

Poor ignorant, ill-informed, Jerry.  The fool doesn't know that there *is*
an existing, absolutely 'standard -- meaning 'totally uniform across all 
versions of Unix, *AND* Unix look-alikes -- that is available to every 
printer vendor.

Any printer manufacturer that so desires _can_ produce a *SINGLE* program 
source that will allow a 'host based' printer to work on _any_ Unix (or
look-alike) platform.  That program can be distributed as a single 'platform-
independant' file, using any (platform independant) 'interpreted' language OF 
THEIR CHOICE -- e.g.Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, or anything similar -- or as 
a 'native' executable (although that would probably require compiling and 
linking on each environment) for optimum performance/efficiency.

The entire specifications that this program must be written to are about
eight lines long.

Installation/use directions are even shorter:
   Put the file 'somewhere convenient' in the  file system.
   Make sure it is marke 'executable' by all -- i.e. 'chmod a+x'
   Place the complete pathname of the installed file as the 'if' paramter
in the '/etc/printcap' entry for the printer queue(s) for this printer,
and set the 'lp' paramter to the name of the  I/O port to which it is
attached.

Writing to -this- standard is a _lot_ of work.  And it *is* understandable
that very few printer manufacturers have done so.  It is worth noting,
though, that printer manufacturers _have_ done it.  Lexmark did it for an
early color ink-jet (the ZX-80), providing a SunOS host-based executable
that provided, self-contained in the executable,  a full "Color PostScript 
Level 3" 'driver' for that printer.

A _far_simpler_ approach -- which *still* meets the requirements of 'not
disclosing anything proprietary', and writing _one_ driver that works on
all Unix systems -- is to write a 'device-driver' module for GhostScript.
The _single_ source-code does have to be compiled for each supported
CPU architecture,  There is a theoretical 'worst case' of needing to
produce as many as three object files ('a.out', ELF, and COFF format)
for a given CPU architecture.

I don't expect this to convince the frothing loon of anything.  But it
should demonstrate that his screaming screeds are not based in fact.


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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Warren Block]

While political and economic issues are important, most of them are not 
directly relevant to the freebsd-questions mailing list, and reduce the 
usefulness of the list in helping people get answers to questions about 
FreeBSD.


Please continue such subjects somewhere else, like private email or 
another mailing list.  http://xkcd.com/386/ might also be helpful.


Thanks!
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT)
Robert Bonomi articulated:

> Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
> denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on
> the matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some
> degree held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist
> mind-set. You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_
> them.  
> 
> BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
> product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the
> outside.

Once again your argument is pathetic. Microsoft has been held legally
responsible by laws written to curtail the robber barons (railroad &
oil) of the 19 and early 20th century.) Of course the EC, or is that
the USSREC, strongly backed (pushed) by Opera, a maker of a web browser
so pathetic that in two years a new upstart, "Chrome" actually has a
larger market share, led a fight to curtail Microsoft's market share.
This is Fascism at its best. A totally free and open market is the best
way to insure the survival of the fittest. Of course socialists cannot
survive in that environment and rush off to find ways of getting
governments involved in protecting their turf.

I have absolutely no problem with holding Microsoft legally responsible
when they release a product with a bug or security flaw. However, this
must be enforced across the board and against every entity that
releases software irregardless of its price. It should probably even
include "port maintainers" who release defective ports. Lets be honest,
if that is even possible for a socialist like yourself, that if you
want to go down that road then lets go -- all the way.

Microsoft's very existence depends on its ability to create an
operating system that allows users to fully use programming and devices
that they choose to deploy. If they cannot achieve that goal then they
die, or else have a market share equivalent to FreeBSD, virtually
undetectable. Microsoft has done a fairly good job of that. FreeBSD,
an the other non-windows operating systems, have not achieved that
goal although a few forward thinking developers like those associated
with Ubuntu have made huge strides in that direction. When it comes to
technological advances, FreeBSD is at the bottom of the list. It is
there primarily because of people who are simply willing to accept
inferiority as the norm. I know I piss people off by my style of
writing. I am just not the sort of person, a socialist primarily, who
bends over and takes it up the ass everyday rather than say "ENOUGH,
lets fix this friggin mess." You cannot even get a decent "N - protocol"
wireless device, or even a not so decent one for that matter, to work
on FreeBSD while the rest of the world has had working solutions for 5
years. What the hell are they waiting for -- the second coming of the
invisible man in the sky? Friggin PATHETIC. However, our esteemed
leadership has managed to bump the version numbers from at least 6 to
the soon to be 9 and we still have no working solution for an easy
method of securing and installing printer drivers, or any drivers for
that matter. Having to modify obscure system files and settings to get
a simple sound card to work is always a PLUS. Pathetically enough, there
are users who do actually feel that way.

Microsoft sells it products for money -- in some cases a lot of money.
FreeBSD and the open-source community as a whole (hole?) gives it away.
Yet Microsoft controls over 90% of the home market. That alone proves
my point. You cannot crate an inferior product and expect the general
population to use it simply because you give it away?

This discussion has gone on long enough and I am already bored by it.
There are some posters like Poly who, while I am aware of his deeply
rooted socialist concepts does actually raise some really useful ideas
and actually to some degree attempts to qualify them. At the very
least, he is willing to discuss them -- something extremely rare in
this arena. Then there are posters like Chad who simply spews the
company line -- Microsoft is bad, we are good, the corporations owe us,
bla bla bla. You cannot hold an intelligent conversation with them
because their mind is closed. I know that as would anyone who reads this
forum with an open mind. Then Robert, there is you. A perfect example
of a large majority of users here who would rather bend over every day
and smile as it is rammed up your ass rather than scream, ENOUGH ALL
READY -- LETS FIX THIS FRIGGIN MESS NOW!. You Robert are the reason
that FreeBSD and to a large extent other non-windows OSs are trailing
the pack. You have been brain washed to believe that inferiority is the
norm and to accept it. Like a good little socialist you have fallen in
line. The problem with that philosophy Robert is if you are not the lead
dog, the view never changes.

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Thomas Mueller]

> > Then I have to portupgrade hplip and dependencies (portupgrade
> > -r ...) or the portmaster equivalent.
 
> Welcome to the wonderful world of printing on FreeBSD. By the way, is
> the time you are investing in this venture considered billable hours or
> just self-flagellation?
 
> --
> Jerry ???
> jerry+f...@seibercom.net

This is not for any current employment (future?), so I guess it would be 
self-flagellation.

But I do want to try the Ethernet way, may need to buy an Ethernet switch or 
router.

I also intend to build a Linux installation, don't really want to be without 
that.

Linux has the best hardware and software support of any open-source OS; I don't 
think there is any argument about that: not to downgrade FreeBSD.

Tom

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Randy Pratt]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:28:30 -0700
"Ronald F. Guilmette"  wrote:

> 
> 
> This isn't really a question.  It's more of a semi-rant, combined with some
> information that I wanted to put on the record (so that it can be googled)
> because it may benefit some folks, other than just me.
> 
> I'm impatient by nature, and I don't like CUPS.  (I would say that I hate
> it, but I don't actually feel that strongly.)
> 
> I have two personal workstations.  When I say "personal" I mean it.  I'm
> the only one who ever touches them.

I think I have over 50 ports depending on CUPS in one way or another..
but I've never configured or knowingly used CUPS.

The easiest way I've found for printing is ports/print/apsfilter.  It
seems to support a lot of printers and has a configuration script that
generates the /etc/printcap file.  There is a guide at

http://www.freebsddiary.org/apsfilter.php

Take a look at http://www.apsfilter.org/ for detailed information.

Randy
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Robert Bonomi]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:44:59 +0200, Polytropon  wrote
>
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT), Robert Bonomi wrote:
> > Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
> > denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on the
> > matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some degree 
> > held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist mind-set.
> > You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_ them.  
>
> There is a market for those who don't want to think
> before buying, who just want to buy, who want to be
> told what's the "right way". In a free society, it's
> also a freedom to give up the individual choice, as
> strange as it sounds.

Yup.  No argument -- idiots are free to do as they chose.

I, however, object -- *most*strenuously* -- when those self-same fascist 
idiots try to force -their- determination of what is 'right' on me.

> > BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
> > product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the outside.
>
> Would benefiting a healthy and free market, which
> means real capitalism (not the stage show we're
> experiencing today). :-)
>
>
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[perryh]

Warren Block  wrote:

> A better example would be a web browser or word processor.  The
> program stops responding to further input until the printer has
> received the entire print job.  This bothered people enough that
> they came up with lpd/lpr ...

Back when lpr/lpd were first written, it was not just a matter of
the printer "receiving" the entire print job but of (nearly) the
entire job being completely printed.  Few printers had more than a
one-line buffer in those days.  There was also the matter of sharing
the printer among a considerable number of concurrent users, those
being the days of multiuser PDP-11's and VAXen.

BTW there was nothing particularly innovative about lpr/lpd --
mainframes like IBM 360's and even 7090's had been using print
spoolers for years.
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT), Robert Bonomi wrote:
> Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
> denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on the
> matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some degree 
> held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist mind-set.
> You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_ them.  

There is a market for those who don't want to think
before buying, who just want to buy, who want to be
told what's the "right way". In a free society, it's
also a freedom to give up the individual choice, as
strange as it sounds. By spending more money, customers
are able to "buy theirselves free" from doubt and
fear. I admit that this attitude shares aspects of
a typical belief or even religion. This concept runs
the thing we currently call the "self-controlling market".



> BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
> product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the outside.

Would benefiting a healthy and free market, which
means real capitalism (not the stage show we're
experiencing today). :-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:54:01 -0400
Jerry  wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:35:20 -0500 (CDT)
> Robert Bonomi articulated:
> 
> > 
> > On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:04:19 -0400, Jerry 
> > pontificated:
> > >
> > > I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop.
> > > My drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the
> > > local pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those
> > > best able to supply them, the OEM.
> > 
> > "I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where
> > you(sic) entire argument breaks down."
> > 
> > That attitude is entirely acceptable for _your_ decision making.
> > Asserting that nobody else shoul(sic) have any other alternatives to
> > what you think is 'acceptable' is downright fascist.
> 
> Who, or is it whom you choose to be your supplier is entirely a
> decision you have to make based on your needs and desires. My point is
> that anyone offering such products should be to some degree held
> legally responsible to their worth. A "Fly by Night" operation is
> totally unacceptable to me. If you find it acceptable then so be it.
> Remember the adage: "You get what you pay for."
> 
> By the way, calling me a Fascist when a significant number of users
> of Open Source are socialist is rather funny.
> 

From a point of view a political sciences theorist might assume, fascism and 
socialism are not that far apart. Both need to abolish individual liberties 
quite soon. Which is what you seem to claim ... abolish the right of the 
individual to make contracts based on his/her terms.

BTW, I do not believe that many open source users would accept a
serious decline of their civil and legal liberty. So I do not believe
many are really more than cherry-picking socialists, even if calling
oneself socialist is somehow en vogue. We could debate anarchism,
though, ... ;-)

-- 
Christopher J. Ruwe
TZ GMT + 2

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Robert Bonomi]

On  Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:54:01 -0400 Jerry  supersciliously
ponftificated:
>
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:35:20 -0500 (CDT)
> Robert Bonomi articulated:
>
> > 
> > On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:04:19 -0400, Jerry 
> > pontificated:
> > >
> > > I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop.
> > > My drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the
> > > local pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those
> > > best able to supply them, the OEM.
> > 
> > "I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where
> > you(sic) entire argument breaks down."
> > 
> > That attitude is entirely acceptable for _your_ decision making.
> > Asserting that nobody else shoul(sic) have any other alternatives to
> > what you think is 'acceptable' is downright fascist.
>
> Who, or is it whom you choose to be your supplier is entirely a
> decision you have to make based on your needs and desires. My point is
> that anyone offering such products should be to some degree held
> legally responsible to their worth.

Of course, _every_ piece of freeware comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
If you don't like it, for _any_reason_whatsoever_, your money will be 
immediately refunded, in full.  You don't even have to return the (in your 
view) "defective", product -- or even stop using it.

> A "Fly by Night" operation is
> totally unacceptable to me. If you find it acceptable then so be it.
> Remember the adage: "You get what you pay for."
>
> By the way, calling me a Fascist when a significant number of users
> of Open Source are socialist is rather funny.

What 'some others' are, and what _you_ are, are unrelated subjects.

Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on the
matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some degree 
held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist mind-set.
You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_ them.  

BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
product shortcomings.  They'd be out of business in a week at the outside.
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:54:01 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> Remember the adage: "You get what you pay for."

That's often true - especially in the home consumer
market you mostly get crap, this is what you pay for.

But in some cases, you can't control _what_ you get
just per payment, means: Just because it's more
expensive does NOT mean it's better than the cheaper
competitor product.

Money is not the selective means here. Knowledge is.
Gaining that knowledge is an investment of time that
traditionally pays in the end. Some have to learn that
the hard way.



> By the way, calling me a Fascist when a significant number of users
> of Open Source are socialist is rather funny.

Can you show me some evidences that proof that "a
significant number of users of Open Source are socialist"
please? Or may I simply dismiss this statement as
a claim with _no_ backup?

Really man... I'd like to know where you got THAT
stupid idea from...

Because I think it is wrong. Do you call big companies
and small businesses socialist because they employ,
let's say Linux, as the basis of their business, which
is to "make money"... would you call them socialist?
I'd say they're capitalist, as they're acting on a
free market where they _choose_ the best product for
a particular job, and the fact that this product can
be purchased for free does not turn the business into
a giveaway charity club!

So using open source products (or let's generalize:
free software) is often the _better_ solution for a
capitalist (that's anyone who doesn't want to give
money away for crap, as it doesn't pay!), because
it maximizes revenue when you have to spend less
money on software that doesn't do the job.

Remember: it's ALWAYS about a particular job getting
done, a requirement or a need that selects _which_
software gets purchased -- for $$$ or for 0.

That has NOTHING do do with socialism. Please try to
consolidate your terminology.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:17:46 -0500 (CDT)
Robert Bonomi articulated:

> P.S. If _anybody_ wants to accuse me of 'name-calling', note well
> that Jerry started it, and without any provocation.

"Mommy.mommy, come quick. The boy next door is picking on me."

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:35:20 -0500 (CDT)
Robert Bonomi articulated:

> 
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:04:19 -0400, Jerry 
> pontificated:
> >
> > I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop.
> > My drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the
> > local pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those
> > best able to supply them, the OEM.
> 
> "I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where
> you(sic) entire argument breaks down."
> 
> That attitude is entirely acceptable for _your_ decision making.
> Asserting that nobody else shoul(sic) have any other alternatives to
> what you think is 'acceptable' is downright fascist.

Who, or is it whom you choose to be your supplier is entirely a
decision you have to make based on your needs and desires. My point is
that anyone offering such products should be to some degree held
legally responsible to their worth. A "Fly by Night" operation is
totally unacceptable to me. If you find it acceptable then so be it.
Remember the adage: "You get what you pay for."

By the way, calling me a Fascist when a significant number of users
of Open Source are socialist is rather funny.

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or ignored.
Do not CC this poster. Please do not ignore the "Reply-To" header.

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Robert Bonomi]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:04:19 -0400, Jerry  pontificated:
>
> I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop. My
> drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the local
> pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those best able to
> supply them, the OEM.

"I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where you(sic)
 entire argument breaks down."

That attitude is entirely acceptable for _your_ decision making.
Asserting that nobody else shoul have any other alternatives to what
you think is 'acceptable' is downright fascist.


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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:04:19 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:12:54 +0200
> Polytropon articulated:
> 
> > So let me make this more clear: IF the hardware manufacturer
> > wants to allow developers to write drivers for their hardware
> > for free, THEN everything they'd have to do is to publish the
> > control codes for the sheet feeder and the ink pee motors.
> > Conclusion: If they don't do it, they don't want developers
> > to do so. It is their RIGHT, because they own the product,
> > and they may sell it under any circumstances they think will
> > lead to profit. Market rules again.
> 
> I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where you
> entire argument breaks down.
> 
> Assume Big Corporation creates a new printer known as "Printer-101" and
> releases its code for any moron, sorry I meant expert to use to write
> OS specific drivers for.
> [...]
> We haven't even touched on what happens if Big Corporation finds a
> glitch with the printer and needs a modification in its firmware and
> modifications to Poly's driver script. Who supplies them and what
> happens when Poly disappears?

Valid point, haven't thought about that yet. The
implications are interesting...

It does not invalidate my argumentation, but it is
worth being considered. "Bad advertising" could be
considered a downside in unit sales, such as it
happens with GPU vendors whose cards to not work
properly on Linux -- they won't get recommended
for use, instead a competitor will make the sale.
But the manufacturers can create that effect theirselves
by releasing crappy drivers. Due to the short life
of hardware, they don't seem to consider drivers
an essential part of their product, as it "does
break next year anyway", an attitude fully matching
the current "state of the art", the throwaway society.
That's why driver support is often designed towards
(and limited to!) a specific kind of "Windows" (as
they make the main target audience, the majority,
the biggest slice of market share).

Fully understandable from a corporate point of view.
Shortsighted in many cases maybe, but understandable.

Why invest time (and therefore, money) in developing
Linux drivers when the product will be withdrawn in
the next year anyway, and the amount of Linux users
going to buy the product are nearly zero, so the
revenue will be quite small, and in _no_ relation
to the investition of developing drivers.

Take USB hard disks for example. As manufacturers
have decided to use _one_ plug, as well as _one_
command set, I can virtually buy any external hard
disk without worrying about compatibility, and I
don't need any company to develop a driver for
that disk for the OS I'm using.

I wish this could be the default situation with
any device, be it a media player, printer+scanner,
USB toy or anything else. A standard that gives
a broad interface with _all_ options available
so the manufacturer can invent any extraordinary
functionality he wants, depending on that "tool-
set". Basically, that's what their current drivers
do: They take a limited set of commands (in some
programming language, assembler, C, whatever is
currently considere "modern" in "Windows", who knows)
and implements the functionality with this _closed_
set of tools, creating something new. Why not do
that with a toolset that's available anywhere, and
that can be ported to any new platform? Without
paying license fees and handing them over to
customers, hoping on the "good will" of possible
competitors who hold the licensing rights so
they won't destroy the product, and maybe the
whole manufacturing company?

The big chance: The "Yes, it also works on ..."
could increase unit sales, and the perspective for
the future would be good: Without developing sets
of new drivers (for different kinds of "Windows"
on different architectures, {m,n}-matrix) they
could state that their product will also work with
future devices. Interoperability, maybe this will
also be more important in the future?

A unified structure that gets PROPERLY (!) implemented
on different platforms could be the solution. It
would not limit inventions or further development.



> Check out "MOVED" in the ports. There are numerous applications that
> are just abandoned or discontinued. If something breaks I want someone
> to contact. I realize that is not the Open Source way however. The
> thought of someone actually being responsible is rare indeed.

There are companies offering support for payment, while
the product they are using and promoting basically is
free of charge. Maybe such a model could be adopted in
such cases?



> I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop. My
> drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the local
> pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those best able to
> supply them, the OEM.

This is what you _need_ to rely on as long as you cannot
validate the products yourself. In many cases, you need
very precide knowledge, maybe tec

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:14:26 -0700
Chuck Swiger articulated:

> On Oct 28, 2011, at 1:04 PM, Jerry wrote:
> > Check out "MOVED" in the ports. There are numerous applications that
> > are just abandoned or discontinued. If something breaks I want
> > someone to contact. I realize that is not the Open Source way
> > however. The thought of someone actually being responsible is rare
> > indeed.
> 
> When you use Open Source software, _you_ are responsible for it, and
> not the author(s) to the extent that such responsibility can legally
> be disclaimed.

Which is exactly what I stated.

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Chuck Swiger]

On Oct 28, 2011, at 1:04 PM, Jerry wrote:
> Check out "MOVED" in the ports. There are numerous applications that
> are just abandoned or discontinued. If something breaks I want someone
> to contact. I realize that is not the Open Source way however. The
> thought of someone actually being responsible is rare indeed.

When you use Open Source software, _you_ are responsible for it, and not the 
author(s) to the extent that such responsibility can legally be disclaimed.

See the Disclaimer in all-caps here, for example:

  http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html

Don't like it?  Feel free to use something else, or feel free to pay for a 
level of support that suits you.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:12:54 +0200
Polytropon articulated:

> So let me make this more clear: IF the hardware manufacturer
> wants to allow developers to write drivers for their hardware
> for free, THEN everything they'd have to do is to publish the
> control codes for the sheet feeder and the ink pee motors.
> Conclusion: If they don't do it, they don't want developers
> to do so. It is their RIGHT, because they own the product,
> and they may sell it under any circumstances they think will
> lead to profit. Market rules again.

I am just going to reply to this one point because it is where you
entire argument breaks down.

Assume Big Corporation creates a new printer known as "Printer-101" and
releases its code for any moron, sorry I meant expert to use to write
OS specific drivers for.

Now lets assume a user/developer/hobbyist (pick one, any one) decides
to write a driver for said "Printer-101" and it is adapted by some
unnamed OS. Lets name the driver writer "Poly". Now users buy this
printer for this specific OS because they were told that a suitable
driver existed for it on said platform. So far so good. Now comes the
fun part.

The printers output sucks. There are numerous system lockups and other
really bad things happening. The manufacturer, Big Corporation finds
its sales of "Printer-101" sinking faster than the Titanic. After a
lengthy investigation it is found that the printer is sound and the
codes supplied were correct. The problem is with the horrific "driver"
written by Poly.

Now tell me, should Poly be held financially responsible for this
abomination? The odds are that Poly will be hiding off in a basement
somewhere unreachable.

We haven't even touched on what happens if Big Corporation finds a
glitch with the printer and needs a modification in its firmware and
modifications to Poly's driver script. Who supplies them and what
happens when Poly disappears?

Check out "MOVED" in the ports. There are numerous applications that
are just abandoned or discontinued. If something breaks I want someone
to contact. I realize that is not the Open Source way however. The
thought of someone actually being responsible is rare indeed.

I buy my cars from known corporations and not the local chop-shop. My
drugs come form known pharmaceutical corporations and not the local
pusher. I like my device specific codes to come from those best able to
supply them, the OEM.

As stated in another post, if a suitable platform were created for
manufacturers to distribute their drivers, whether it be printers,
modems, wireless devices, etcetera, the problem would be solved. Of
course it is easier for all the non-windows based OSs to have a pissing
contest rather than create a unified front so I am confident that the
prospect of that occurring in my life time are nil.

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:36:20 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> Welcome to the wonderful world of printing on FreeBSD. By the way, is
> the time you are investing in this venture considered billable hours or
> just self-flagellation?

Maybe you can also ask the other way round:

BEFORE I buy a product, I ask: Does this product offer
compatibility with my OS? Does it support my system?

I'm doing so for some years now intendedly, and I spend
less money and have less trouble, still I can use the
optimal hardware + software combination for the jobs I
need them for.

Of course, only very few professionals do use this
approach, and they are a minority. They are not part
of the target audience of manufacturers as they get
the most revenue from the home consumer markets;
regarding the advanced users, they _rightfully_
say: "We don't care, as it doesn't pay."

This is a simple logic of the market.

Regarding standards: If products are somehow compatible
with something that's already established and supported,
the the questions at the beginning can be answered with
YES, leading to a unit sale.

I think this is meant by "voting with my wallet", right?

Product doesn't work for me - no sale.

But as I initially said: Majorities decide in market
regards. Those majorities are grown by advertising,
which means that their needs are first created, then
formed, and finally satisfied. See "Jevons paradox"
in relation to "modern" products again.



On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:59:16 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> I argued against any standard that strangles the ability to innovate.

And I fully agree with that. ANY concept that is intended
to limit the possibilities and the evolution of a product
(hardware or software) is bad, as it limits freedom, as
well as a natural flow of a free market.



> Certain "standards" such as port 25 for SMTP are a necessary evil.
> There are other examples.

Yes.



> Microsoft, since Win95 has had a simple method for the installation of
> programs and drivers into it system. A program that is attempting to
> install itself into the system calls "msi"
>  and supplies the needed
> data to that application. MSI then takes over and installs the
> application/driver. This allows developers to worry about creating
> their applications or drivers without the headache of actually
> installing them.

Ha! Very funny. :-)

Most software suppliers do use their own installers, just
as they use own GUIs (for "inconsistency). I know that the
MSI mechanism exists for many years, but developers seem
to already have no big intention to use it. "Windows" does
not have a concept of centrally managed software search,
instalaltion, auditing, upgrading and deinstallation, so
this fits the picture well.

Also malware, spyware and all the "fun" you have in "Windows"
land bypasses such means to improve installation habits.
This is because users have developed a certain way of
how they get programs onto their PCs: First they open
a web browser and google for it, then they download
some *.EXE file and execute it, go through a "wizard",
next, next, next, wait, and reboot. This method also
applies to drivers. Just look at what manufacturers
put onto their installation CDs (or DVDs today), or
how they encourage the users to download the stuff
from the web. Program cycling (like upgrades) are
typically done by each program on its own, individually.

Again, marketing concepts apply here: Many software
vendors regard the installer as part of their product,
as a "viewing window" needed to have advertising
purposes. Things such as company logos, entertainment
elements, registration and other things therefore are
claimed to _have to_ come in the installer.

Oh, and I think you're wrong regarding the year: The
MSI system, if I remember correctly, became available
in the product "Windows 2000". The installer itself
depends on the PRESENCE of the proper infrastructure,
and there are various incompatible versions across
the many kinds of "Windows", and you cannot install
every MSI version on any arbitrary "Windows". This
has to be made sure _before_ attempting to install
anything that uses the MSI mechanism!

The MSI intrastructure is also not freely documented,
so it's not fully possible to employ it without further
burdens. It's also "Windows" centric and cannot be
used on other systems. And in the future, it's quite
possible that certification will be added in order to
control _what_ can be installed on a "Windows" PC and
what cannot. And licensing also comes into mind, where
"coworkers" of MICROS~1 are treated as 1st class
cititens, whereas competitors would have to buy a
license to use this approach. The actual programs to
create MSI packages also have to be considered: Are
they expensive, in comparison to the free and powerful
tools known in the Linux and BSD world?

Again, politics enter the field.

And then there's the security consideration. MSI as a
"black box" prohibits the proper inspection of its
co

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:53:44 -0600 (MDT), Warren Block wrote:
> A better example would be a web browser or word processor.  The program 
> stops responding to further input until the printer has received the 
> entire print job.  This bothered people enough that they came up with 
> lpd/lpr, which is part of the base FreeBSD system and works well.  It's 
> been around long enough for problems to have been worked out.

Furthermore, this system's mechanism allows the
use of "user plugins", i. e. custom printer filters
that talk to the device directly. This means that
as soon as the printer spooler has received the
data from the application program, any delays just
happen to the processing and transmitting job (to
the printer), not to the originating program.

For example, I've written a simple "search & replace
filter" to send data directly to the parallel port
where a daisywheel printer is attached. It's easy
to combine this with the system's tools lpr / lpd /
lpq / lprm, in combination with the /etc/printcap file
and a shell script.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, Daniel Feenberg wrote:


On Thu, 27 Oct 2011, Mark Felder wrote:

You've just made me a happy, happy user. I always wondered what it would 
take to get rid of CUPS, and today I've done it. Finally my print jobs are 
instantaneous here at work instead of being a mystery. Can't wait to go 
home and do the same with my personal laser.


Has anyone here experience with PDQ? It is a printing system that appears to 
address the problems cited in this thread.


 http://pdq.sourceforge.net/

Quoting from the website:

 Most casual unix users regard lp and lpr as
 black holes to which print jobs disappear,
 and may or may not emerge.


The arguments seem weak to me, and it sounds like a reinvention of lpd. 
It's unfortunate that many people see CUPS as the default choice.

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011, Mark Felder wrote:

You've just made me a happy, happy user. I always wondered what it would 
take to get rid of CUPS, and today I've done it. Finally my print jobs 
are instantaneous here at work instead of being a mystery. Can't wait to 
go home and do the same with my personal laser.


Has anyone here experience with PDQ? It is a printing system that appears 
to address the problems cited in this thread.


  http://pdq.sourceforge.net/

Quoting from the website:

  Most casual unix users regard lp and lpr as
  black holes to which print jobs disappear,
  and may or may not emerge.

I haven't tried it, as we have been able to make CUPS work (barely), but I 
am sympathetic to the sentiments expressed. Other than Windows-specific 
printers, FreeBSD printing problems are home-grown, and not caused by 
vendor misbehavior.


Daniel Feenberg
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:09:05 -0500 (CDT)
Robert Bonomi articulated:

> > From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Thu Oct 27 16:46:51 2011
> > Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:46:21 -0400
> > From: Jerry 
> > To: FreeBSD 
> > Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS
> >
> > On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:11:32 +0200
> > Polytropon articulated:
> >
> > > On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:39:05 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> > > > Printing under MS Windows is a breeze.
> > > 
> > > > The *nix community has never
> > > > gotten printing up to that lever.
> > > 
> > > It _had_, past tense. :-)
> > > 
> > > > While there are those who continually
> > > > blame the "manufacturers", the truth is that any COO, CFO {or
> > > > any other alphabetic combination that you like} that seriously
> > > > proposed the creation of a department dedicated to the writing
> > > > of drivers for non-windows based systems, a department that
> > > > would therefore have a zero based projected cash flow, would be
> > > > removed from office posthaste.
> > > 
> > > Fully agree, but if established standards would have
> > > been truly adopted by the manufactueres for their
> > > products, there would be no need to develop any drivers.
> > > One standard interface could address all printer
> > > functionality, and maybe even more, such as scanning
> > > or faxing functionalities quite common in the "egg-laying
> > > wool-milk-sows" we see on the consumer markets.
> >
> > First of all let me say that I love standards; there are so many of
> > them to choose from.
> >
> > Secondly, I seriously hope that never comes to pass. Once you lock
> > yourself into one specific interface the ability to innovate has
> > been removed. I cannot think of a worse possible scenario.
> 
> There's no real need for a 'standard' for communication with dumb
> raster devices, which is what most 'winprinters' are.  
> 
> All that is needed is a _published_ specification such that others
> can implement communications with that device.
> 
> And there isn't a whole lot to such a specification:
>   How start-of-page is marked
>   How start-of-line is marked
>   How end-of-line is marked
>   How end-of-page is marked
>   How pixels are represented
>   Pixels per raster line,
>   Raster lines per page,
>   How the bits are sequenced
>   The compression methodology, if any, used.
> 
> there is little reason _not_ to make such specification public.
> 
> > > Sadly, "the one standard" doesn't seem to exist, and
> > > manufacturers are not willing to discuss one. Of course,
> > > such a standard would have to be free and open, so any
> > > OS could implement it.
> >
> > There you go putting restriction on how such an "standard" should be
> > implemented. I have a better idea. Why doesn't the *nix/*BSD {pick
> > any other letter combination that turns you on} agree to one
> > uniform method of implementing printer drivers and then let the
> > manufacturers implement it on their end.
> 
> You argued cogently _against_ manufacturers using standards.
> Now you argue in favor of the entire *nix commnity agreeing on one.
> 
> Somehow, the phrase "double standard' springs to mind.  

I argued against any standard that strangles the ability to innovate.
Certain "standards" such as port 25 for SMTP are a necessary evil.
There are other examples.

Microsoft, since Win95 has had a simple method for the installation of
programs and drivers into it system. A program that is attempting to
install itself into the system calls "msi"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer> and supplies the needed
data to that application. MSI then takes over and installs the
application/driver. This allows developers to worry about creating
their applications or drivers without the headache of actually
installing them.

Now, if the *BSD and other non-windows platform had a similar
application, one that ran EXACTLY THE SAME on each different platform,
developers would have a far easier task designing drivers for a wide
target audience instead of having to custom design each driver to
each individual platform which sometimes changes drastically between
major version numbers.

> >I have spoke to two company reps in the
> > past year, one regarding printers, and both stated outright that the
> > thought of writing and maintaining drivers on a multitude of
> > platforms scares them to

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:08:07 + (GMT)
Thomas Mueller articulated:

> from Mark Felder :
> 
> > You've just made me a happy, happy user. I always wondered what it
> > would take to get rid of CUPS, and today I've done it. Finally my
> > print jobs are instantaneous here at work instead of being a
> > mystery. Can't wait to go home and do the same with my personal
> > laser.
> 
> I wish I could do that with my HP n1212mf LaserJet, but the necessary
> hplip port depends on cups-base.
> 
> I could not get that printer to work on the old computer under
> FreeBSD 8.2 and NetBSD 5.1_STABLE, problems with the tricky USB
> interface, won't work with ulpt, but I didn't try the ethernet way
> yet.
> 
> On the new computer, FreeBSD being the only hard-drive OS installed
> so far, I built hplip but haven't tested it yet.  Upgrading by source
> from FreeBSD 9.0-BETA2 to RC1, I was sure to deactivate ulpt in the
> kernel config file.  I am still struggling with some files in /etc
> messed up by mergemaster.  I may have found a solution but haven't
> tested it yet; I did back up my old /etc directory.
> 
> Then I have to portupgrade hplip and dependencies (portupgrade
> -r ...) or the portmaster equivalent.

Welcome to the wonderful world of printing on FreeBSD. By the way, is
the time you are investing in this venture considered billable hours or
just self-flagellation?

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Thomas Mueller]

from Mark Felder :

> You've just made me a happy, happy user. I always wondered what it would  
> take to get rid of CUPS, and today I've done it. Finally my print jobs are  
> instantaneous here at work instead of being a mystery. Can't wait to go  
> home and do the same with my personal laser.

I wish I could do that with my HP n1212mf LaserJet, but the necessary hplip 
port depends on cups-base.

I could not get that printer to work on the old computer under FreeBSD 8.2 and 
NetBSD 5.1_STABLE,
problems with the tricky USB interface, won't work with ulpt, but I didn't try 
the ethernet way yet.

On the new computer, FreeBSD being the only hard-drive OS installed so far, I 
built hplip but haven't
tested it yet.  Upgrading by source from FreeBSD 9.0-BETA2 to RC1, I was sure 
to deactivate ulpt in
the kernel config file.  I am still struggling with some files in /etc messed 
up by mergemaster.  I
may have found a solution but haven't tested it yet; I did back up my old /etc 
directory.

Then I have to portupgrade hplip and dependencies (portupgrade -r ...) or the 
portmaster equivalent.

Tom

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:


In message ,
Warren Block  wrote:


...

The only thing that worries me about my rather ad-hoc way of setting up
a "personal" printer (as describe above) is that I sort of wonder what
will happen if I ever try to print something when something else is
currently printing.


There's also the issue of printing large files, which will tie up the
command line until the printer has buffered them all...


"Tie up the command line" ??

John Levine attempted to make the same point, and I'm still not really getting
it.  This is why we have X!  I can have all of the "command lines" that I want,
and I frequently do.  I have at least 15 different xterm windows open as we
speak, so I really don't see "tying up the command line" as a real issue.


A better example would be a web browser or word processor.  The program 
stops responding to further input until the printer has received the 
entire print job.  This bothered people enough that they came up with 
lpd/lpr, which is part of the base FreeBSD system and works well.  It's 
been around long enough for problems to have been worked out.

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[perryh]

Polytropon  wrote:

> Companies that develop printers want money.
> They need to continuously sell printers ...

This seems to be becoming less and less accurate.

It has long been the case that consumer-grade ink-blot printers are
sold below cost -- the money being made by selling ink cartridges.
In recent years, some manufacturers of laser printers seem to be
adopting this business model also.
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:39:17 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:52:49 +0200
> Polytropon articulated:
> 
> > There isn't much you can invent on a hammer. :-)
> 
> Absolutely true. However, as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "It is
> tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as
> if it were a nail."

Heh, I also thought about that saying after sending
the message. Maybe a bad example. :-)



> This sort of tunnel vision, at least in my opinion, has infected the
> *BSD community in general. They look at a problem and then, rather than
> finding a solution, find someone to blame. My my late father was so
> fond of saying when someone complained, "It's better to light a candle
> than curse the darkness."

It's always a consideration of "what to invest" versus
"what to get out of the deal", considering risks and
options. And often politics.

Just imagine a "thing" like FreeBSD would implement
a means to simply use "Windows" printer drivers. And
then MICROS~1 starts suing, both FreeBSD and its
users (!!!) for "illegally using" something.

Sounds stupid and contraproductive?

It is - but things like this seem to be common. You
surely know that MICROS~1 has more revenue from its
competitor HTC than from their own mobile phone
platform? The idea: "You know, maybe we have some
patents, but we won't tell you which they are, even
in a court trial we won't, but maybe we have some.
And if you don't pay $5 per unit sold, then...
maybe... we'll sue you and all your customers."
The "fee" has been raised to $15 some time later.
(If I understood the process correctly - I'm not
much interested in this mobile stuff and all the
ugly politics involved because this has nothing to
do with a free market.)

There needs to be some security both for developers
and for users. Current market politics don't seem
to provide them.

On the other hand, implementing drivers for "simple
printers" (typical inkpee products) is easy when you
know the control codes to make the paper and the
printing head move. Reverse-engineering such stuff
isn't that easy, sadly. The question is: Are the
manufacturers willing to publish those little details?
Do they see that as "too costly"?

This is the opposite approach to making a "Windows"-like
driver interface in UNIX / Linux to use the currently
(and on the long run, partially) working drivers. But
see my concerns regarding politics & blackmail.



By the way, I'm also a fan of "lighting the candle".
After all, it's a consideration of how you value your
time, if you see it worth investing in getting something
to work, learn important things (for your IT career),
or if you feel you should return something to the
community that provides you a powerful OS for free.
There are many ways you can "light the candle",
it's up to you _how_ you do it. Anyway, everything
is better than staying in darkness and stumbling
into a pile of garbage. :-)




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Robert Bonomi]

> From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Thu Oct 27 16:46:51 2011
> Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:46:21 -0400
> From: Jerry 
> To: FreeBSD 
> Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS
>
> On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:11:32 +0200
> Polytropon articulated:
>
> > On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:39:05 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> > > Printing under MS Windows is a breeze.
> > 
> > > The *nix community has never
> > > gotten printing up to that lever.
> > 
> > It _had_, past tense. :-)
> > 
> > > While there are those who continually
> > > blame the "manufacturers", the truth is that any COO, CFO {or any
> > > other alphabetic combination that you like} that seriously proposed
> > > the creation of a department dedicated to the writing of drivers for
> > > non-windows based systems, a department that would therefore have a
> > > zero based projected cash flow, would be removed from office
> > > posthaste.
> > 
> > Fully agree, but if established standards would have
> > been truly adopted by the manufactueres for their
> > products, there would be no need to develop any drivers.
> > One standard interface could address all printer
> > functionality, and maybe even more, such as scanning
> > or faxing functionalities quite common in the "egg-laying
> > wool-milk-sows" we see on the consumer markets.
>
> First of all let me say that I love standards; there are so many of
> them to choose from.
>
> Secondly, I seriously hope that never comes to pass. Once you lock
> yourself into one specific interface the ability to innovate has been
> removed. I cannot think of a worse possible scenario.

There's no real need for a 'standard' for communication with dumb raster
devices, which is what most 'winprinters' are.  

All that is needed is a _published_ specification such that others
can implement communications with that device.

And there isn't a whole lot to such a specification:
  How start-of-page is marked
  How start-of-line is marked
  How end-of-line is marked
  How end-of-page is marked
  How pixels are represented
  Pixels per raster line,
  Raster lines per page,
  How the bits are sequenced
  The compression methodology, if any, used.

there is little reason _not_ to make such specification public.

> > Sadly, "the one standard" doesn't seem to exist, and
> > manufacturers are not willing to discuss one. Of course,
> > such a standard would have to be free and open, so any
> > OS could implement it.
>
> There you go putting restriction on how such an "standard" should be
> implemented. I have a better idea. Why doesn't the *nix/*BSD {pick any
> other letter combination that turns you on} agree to one uniform method
> of implementing printer drivers and then let the manufacturers
> implement it on their end.

You argued cogently _against_ manufacturers using standards.
Now you argue in favor of the entire *nix commnity agreeing on one.

Somehow, the phrase "double standard' springs to mind.  

>I have spoke to two company reps in the
> past year, one regarding printers, and both stated outright that the
> thought of writing and maintaining drivers on a multitude of platforms
> scares them to death. The problem is not with the manufacturers but
> rather with the fragmentation of the non-windows arena.

There is -no- need for *them* to actually write drivers for use in 
'specialty'/'niche' markets. 

*ALL* they have to do is release the 'specifications' for the communications 
format and protocol that the device uses.
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:52:49 +0200
Polytropon articulated:

> There isn't much you can invent on a hammer. :-)

Absolutely true. However, as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "It is
tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as
if it were a nail."

This sort of tunnel vision, at least in my opinion, has infected the
*BSD community in general. They look at a problem and then, rather than
finding a solution, find someone to blame. My my late father was so
fond of saying when someone complained, "It's better to light a candle
than curse the darkness."

-- 
Jerry ✌
jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

 any
> > OS could implement it.
> 
> There you go putting restriction on how such an "standard" should be
> implemented.

Yes. In my opinion, this is a requirement to be
provided on a free market. Or people wouldn't have
learned anything from the big fails of history.



> I have a better idea. Why doesn't the *nix/*BSD {pick any
> other letter combination that turns you on} agree to one uniform method
> of implementing printer drivers and then let the manufacturers
> implement it on their end.

I would _LOVE_ that to happen! You can't imagine how
often I'm claiming that the UNIX and Linux world should
be the first one to introduce a really universal interface
where hardware developers could simply plug into, and then
write their drivers, open source or not (it's their
decision). Stable ABI and API are mandatory here.

On the other hand, such a stable interface could also
be seen as limited. "It doesn't have the feature XY we
want for our driver" could be a typical claim.

Really, I always did assume that some part of CUPS (or
Gutenprint, Foomatic, choose one, I've not fully understood
what those exactly are, I admit) _is_ that uniformed
method you're talking about.



> I have spoke to two company reps in the
> past year, one regarding printers, and both stated outright that the
> thought of writing and maintaining drivers on a multitude of platforms
> scares them to death. The problem is not with the manufacturers but
> rather with the fragmentation of the non-windows arena.

Even the "Windows" land is fragmented, as there are so
many of them with incompatible infrastructures, leading
to obsolescense because a driver of version X doesn't
work anymore on version Y, and the printer manufacturer
did decide not to support version Y.

According to market share, UNIX and Linux are not important
enogh on the main market, which is the home consumer market.
This might chance when more and more "deviants" walk out
of "Windows" land and move to Linux. Still "the Linux" is
not a target, as you correctly pointed out.

The "problem" with the manufactuers, as I explained, is
that they think in unit sales. The majority decides here,
or let's say the percentage of market share. It is that
simple, and even understandable from a financial point
of view. Units can be produced cheaper, so more units
are sold, and the investition for keeping the drivers
for _one_ version of "Windows" seem to justify it.



> I remember when "Hayes" ruled the modem world. The "Hayes command set"
> was the de facto standard. The along came U.S. Robotics and said, "Screw
> you Hayes and your friggin command set. We can do it faster and better
> without your crap." And, they did. The same can be said about Epson and
> their printer command set. Hell, the list goes on and on. Today, PS or
> PCL (there are strong supports on both sides of the aisle) might be
> king, but what about tomorrow.

Yes, that's what I'm also thinking of. It's not hust a
transition in protocols or languages, but also in hardware,
in cables and connectors, in form factors and slot sizes.



> Locking yourself into any technology is
> suicide.

The term "vendor lock-in" appears in this relation. It's
as dangerous and expensive as _any_ lock-in. As soon as
your own business is blocked because a key technology isn't
supported anymore, you're out of business.



> Classical "Dinosaur Thinking" as it is referred to in the
> business world.

You may refer to IBM as a living dinoraur. I'm sure you
know that essential (!) infrastructures, hardware and
programs are run on OS/360 derived systems. They date
back more than 40 years, and they are closed source.
Still there is a massive backup with money to keep that
technology alive and IN USE. Also see the AS/400 derived
systems, same thing.

This means: With enough money, you can keep any technology
running, be it superior or inferior, intelligent or
stupid, efficient or consuming. (You can easily conclude
WHERE such dinosaur-like technology is in use: Yes, in
fields where money doesn't matter, i. e. governmental
installations and other areas funded from public money
or big corporations that see a SHIFT in their technology
as even more expensive than keeping their dinosaurs on
artificial life support.)



> You do know what happened to those creatures when they
> could not adapt don't you.

They live in museums where people pay money to see them. :-)



> The fact that companies do not directly support *BSD, etcetera is not
> news. The fact that FreeBSD does not support the technology that is
> available (does the phase "N Protocol ring a bell") is the problem that
> should be addressed. 

Yes, it should. I

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[John Levine]

>>I'm not a huge fan of CUPS, but at this point it's the best of a bad
>>lot.  I find the queueing useful, since I often print documents long
>>enough that I don't want to wait.
>
>I don't quite understand the issue you are raising john.

$ lpr foo
$ lpr bar
$ lpr baz

It will print the three files in a row, starting each when the previous
one is done.  Like, you know, a print queue.

>John are you saying that my documents, some of which *start out* as
>.PS files, are converted by CUPS to .PDF and thence (since I don't
>have any printers that speak PDF) the document is then converted
>*back* to Postscript for actual printing??

Seems that way, based on a little poking around.  If I use something
like evince, I think it will do whatever CUPS tells it to do.  If I
use the basic CUPS lpr command to print a .ps file, that's fast since
there's nothing smart enough to do something stupid.

>>I think this is a bug.
>
>If it is, then I think it may be a long-standing one.
>
>I did something very like what I just described doing on FreeBSD 8.2 also
>back on my old FreeBSD 7.0 system which I first installed maybe three years
>of more ago.

My recollection is that CUPS on FBSD 7 printed a lot faster, although
it also may have something to do with the fact that I used to use a
USB to parallel thing, and since then I scored a print server card on
ebay for about $15 and print over the network.  (There are other
computers on the network that other people print from, so this is an
overall win.)

R's,
John

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Mark Felder]

You've just made me a happy, happy user. I always wondered what it would  
take to get rid of CUPS, and today I've done it. Finally my print jobs are  
instantaneous here at work instead of being a mystery. Can't wait to go  
home and do the same with my personal laser.

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Jerry]

ve
> support for the printer anymore, encouraging you
> to buy a new one.

I have  the ability to use a driver from Win95 up to XP, and in a few
case even Vista. On the other hand, updating FreeBSD to a new major
version number and in the case of the nVidia display driver even a
minor number, causes me to force a rebuild of the system. Just for
clarification, a minor system update with nVidia only causes me to have
to rebuild that port. The same exists also for at least LSOF. There may
be more however.

At some point though support for anything will cease, unless you prefer
to live in the dinosaur age.

> On the other hand, this business model benefits the
> development of new technology (financed by unit
> sales), and making technology cheaper to purchase.

Business 101

I know dozens of college students that use inexpensive ink-jets
printers because the are:

1) inexpensive
2) easy to install

Trying to get an ink-jet printer to work on FreeBSD can be a whole new
experience in frustration. The manufacturers created a product to fit a
particular niche in the market place. The fact that FreeBSD cannot
accommodate that is a problem.

I just spent several hours trying to convert a linux printer driver to
work on FreeBSD. Of course, both platforms use a different hierarchy
which then requires me to attempt to manually modify the files to point
to the right location, etcetera. I still have not gotten it to work.
This is with only one driver on one PC. I can easily see why any
manufacturer would not want to be bothered with this bullshit.
Microsoft has used the same basic method for the installation of
printer drivers since Win95. However, you cannot even get Linux/*BSD,
etcetera to agree on a common, uniform hierarchy for and method of
implementing printer drivers. I couldn't care less if they used CUPS.
LPR or whatever just as long as they get a unified method in place.

If such a system were in place, there would be no problem in getting
developers to write the necessary drivers. Hell, if they did it right
they could use the Windows drivers. However, we both know that they
(the OS developers) would rather bite off their nose than do that out
of pure spite.


-- 
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jerry+f...@seibercom.net

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message , 
Warren Block  wrote:

>...
>> The only thing that worries me about my rather ad-hoc way of setting up
>> a "personal" printer (as describe above) is that I sort of wonder what
>> will happen if I ever try to print something when something else is
>> currently printing.
>
>There's also the issue of printing large files, which will tie up the 
>command line until the printer has buffered them all...

"Tie up the command line" ??

John Levine attempted to make the same point, and I'm still not really getting
it.  This is why we have X!  I can have all of the "command lines" that I want,
and I frequently do.  I have at least 15 different xterm windows open as we
speak, so I really don't see "tying up the command line" as a real issue.


Regards,
rfg
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <20111027143609.60335.qm...@joyce.lan>, you wrote:

>I'm not a huge fan of CUPS, but at this point it's the best of a bad
>lot.  I find the queueing useful, since I often print documents long
>enough that I don't want to wait.

I don't quite understand the issue you are raising john.

Even with my direct-to-/dev/{u}lpt0 approach, if I needed to print a really
big file, I would just start the print in one window and then minimize that
one and continue on working in my other windows.  I mean in what way would
one need to "wait"?

>>More importantly, CUPS, for me at least, seems to be quite slow.
>>There's a lng pause after I queue something for printing
>>until something actually comes out of the printer.
>
>Yeah.  I have a similar printer with a similar problem.  I believe
>that what's going on is that the current version of CUPS tells all the
>clients to print to PDF, then for printers that don't handle PDF,
>converts that to postcript using ghostscript which is very, very slow.

Huh??

John are you saying that my documents, some of which *start out* as .PS files,
are converted by CUPS to .PDF and thence (since I don't have any printers
that speak PDF) the document is then converted *back* to Postscript for
actual printing??

If so, I can sure see why the multiple pointless conversion would indeed
take up a lot of time.

>I think this is a bug.

If it is, then I think it may be a long-standing one.

I did something very like what I just described doing on FreeBSD 8.2 also
back on my old FreeBSD 7.0 system which I first installed maybe three years
of more ago.

I can't really remember anymore if I did it primarily for speed reasons or
because (as now) I just didn't want to have to go thru all fo the falderall
of properly configuring CUPS, but I suspect it was both.


Regards,
rfg
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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:39:05 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> Printing under MS Windows is a breeze.

> The *nix community has never
> gotten printing up to that lever.

It _had_, past tense. :-)



> While there are those who continually
> blame the "manufacturers", the truth is that any COO, CFO {or any other
> alphabetic combination that you like} that seriously proposed the
> creation of a department dedicated to the writing of drivers for
> non-windows based systems, a department that would therefore have a zero
> based projected cash flow, would be removed from office posthaste.

Fully agree, but if established standards would have
been truly adopted by the manufactueres for their
products, there would be no need to develop any drivers.
One standard interface could address all printer
functionality, and maybe even more, such as scanning
or faxing functionalities quite common in the "egg-laying
wool-milk-sows" we see on the consumer markets.

Sadly, "the one standard" doesn't seem to exist, and
manufacturers are not willing to discuss one. Of course,
such a standard would have to be free and open, so any
OS could implement it.

There's a reason for that: Companies that develop
printers want money. They need to continuously sell
printers, and there's an ongoing "renewal" of hardware
and software, e. g. new printer requires new OS, new
OS requires new printer. This is done by planned
obsolescense.

Just imagine you had a printer that would work with
any OS. First of all, you wouldn't buy a "Windows",
so the deal between the manufacturer and MICROS~1
would break: "We make our devices for your 'Windows',
you tell us about your interfaces, and we make a
driver for your current product." You would be able
to use your printer with a free OS. Furthermore,
if this free OS got updated, you would continue
using your printer because the new OS would also
support it, unlike "Windows" that would not have
support for the printer anymore, encouraging you
to buy a new one.

On the other hand, this business model benefits the
development of new technology (financed by unit
sales), and making technology cheaper to purchase.

Downside here again: The cheaper printers become,
the more paper is wasted for printing. Yes, I know
the "paperless office" is a pure utopia, but I've
seen things... scary things...

Example: In a company I know emailing is quite new.
When office A wants to send a document to office B
per email, A prints the email message and faxes it
to B, where it also gets printed (inkpee and laser
faxes). After that, B checks for new messages and
then prints the message he received.



> Even the few companies that do write a limited set of drivers for the
> exceedingly fragmented *.nix community tend to stick with vanilla Linux
> and perhaps Debian. It took nVidia years (literally) to get FreeBSD to
> update their product to the point when nVidia could supply 64 bit
> drivers.

Right, it simply doesn't pay in the first place to
support that fragmented... can I say "target point"?
It's more like a whole forrest of targets that's 
changing very often. :-)

Really, I agree that the same business logic applies
in driver support. As the success of free systems is
not measured by unit sales, there is no such thing
as "market share" for them. But market share decides
about what manufacturers pay attention to.

In the past, they were forced to support certain
standards in order to get their devices sold. A
printer that could not be addressed by standard
Epson codes just wouldn't sell. Later on, PS was
the only thing you could sell a printer. (The same
applied to graphics cards which needed to support
standardized command sets in order to work properly.)

Today, this is not important anymore as individual
drivers for specific "Windows" versions are the key
to unit sales. This is of course a short-term
decision, but finally most three-letter-superiors
decide by quarterly numbers.

This _may_ turn out to be contraproductive in the
end. The "decision makers" just hope to have moved
to a different position when this happens where they
get a better wage for less responsibility. :-)



> I recently spoke with a representative from Brothers regarding
> securing a driver for one of their laser printers. He himself is a
> Linux man and said that he felt my pain. He also informed me that while
> it had been discussed from time to time, it was always felt that it
> would be a lose-lose situation. They do supply drivers for Linux and
> Debian but that is about it. He stated that it was felt that the cost
> of writing drivers for a widely fragmented community and then having to
> support said drivers would just not be financially feasible.

Interesting. I always thought CUPS (which is common across
the man

Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Chuck Swiger]

On Oct 27, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Jerry wrote:
> Printing under MS Windows is a breeze. The *nix community has never
> gotten printing up to that lever.

Of course Unix has had functional printing; the issue is mostly dumb printers 
which can't accept PostScript or at least PCL, and need an OS-specific driver 
to rasterize for the device.  A secondary problem is X11's imaging model with 
the dichotomy between on-screen imaging and print imaging.

For examples of Unix printing done right, look back to NEXTSTEP twenty years 
ago, using Display Postscript and Pantone colorimetry to provide true WYSIWYG; 
also, Sun's NEWS and OpenWindows also had the DPS extension to X.  Most of that 
technology is still around under MacOS X, although DPS has largely been 
replaced by a PDF imaging model instead.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck

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Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS

[Chip Camden]

Quoth Ronald F. Guilmette on Thursday, 27 October 2011:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> 
> printer='/dev/ulpt0'
> 
> if [ $# = 0 ]; then
>   cat | /usr/local/libexec/psif > $printer
> else
>   for arg in $* ; do
> cat $arg | /usr/local/libexec/psif > $printer
>   done
> fi

Not to be a pedant (okay, maybe I am), but you could eliminate the
extraneous `cat` in both commands:

#!/bin/sh

printer='/dev/ulpt0'

if [ $# = 0 ]; then
  /usr/local/libexec/psif > $printer
else
  for arg in $* ; do
/usr/local/libexec/psif < $arg > $printer
  done
fi

Nice work, though!

-- 
.O. | Sterling (Chip) Camden  | http://camdensoftware.com
..O | sterl...@camdensoftware.com | http://chipsquips.com
OOO | 2048R/D6DBAF91  | http://chipstips.com


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