Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On Mon, Jun 01, 2020 at 12:46:16AM -0400, William Park via talk wrote: > I've given up printing from Linux. I go to Windows 10 laptop, scp the > file from Linux, then print from there. Always works. Hmm, I had not printed from linux in a long time, so I thought I would try. Printed a test page postscript file perfectly first try. So at least my epson WF4630 has no problem with printing from linux (appears to be using ESC-P/R driver in cups). -- Len Sorensen --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On 2020-06-01 9:23 a.m., Peter King via talk wrote: Brother advertises "PostScript 3 Emulation" which I thought was code for using Ghostscript or whatever. I just checked: the Brother MFC-L2750DW I have *does* claim to have BR-Script3 and PCL6, but IPP doesn't need to use it. CUPS will usually convert PostScript to PDF in the print process anyway, so BR-Script3 doesn't add anything. Your Lexmark claims to support IPP. This will only work if you're talking to it over a network. Direct USB connection brings problems. *Some* IPP printers support IPP over USB, and the ippusbxd or ipp-usb daemons enable it. I don't know if this is supported by your printer. Can you find your printer via IPP? Try: $ ippfind ipp://BRWD89C6730425A.local:631/ipp/print I get that from my Brother printer. To find what formats your printer supports, try ipptool with the URL returned above and one of the system test scripts: $ ipptool -vt ipp://BRWD89C6730425A.local:631/ipp/print get-printer-attributes.test | grep document-format-supported document-format-supported (1setOf mimeMediaType) = application/octet-stream,image/urf,image/pwg-raster So I see my printer only accepts the two CUPS/IPP raster formats. That's fine: better to do the rasterization inside a fast desktop than rely on some PS/PDF RIP of unknown capability in your printer. It looks like cups 2.3.3-1 for Arch includes ippfind and ipptool, and requires/includes Avahi for printer discovery. I wish I could help more. Printing now is genuinely "forget everything". It's not like I'm accepting lower-quality printing with IPP, either. cheers, Stewart --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
Thanks for the write-up Stewart, very useful for a non-admin home user like me. John. > > -- Original Message -- > From: "Stewart C. Russell via talk" > Date: June 1, 2020 at 12:20 PM > > > On 2020-06-01 10:14 a.m., Christopher Browne via talk wrote: > > > > But I had gotten myself accustomed to the impression that > > "with CUPS, It Just Works(tm)", so colour me surprised. > > > > Has Microsoft pushed back to try to get WinPrinters back to be a > > thing? > > I don't think so. Since all printers (except cheap USB-only disposable > ones) need to print over wireless from an iPad/iPhone, it's got much > simpler. Different, yes, but simpler for the user. > > I've got a 2012-vintage Epson WorkForce WF7520 large-format inkjet AiO. > It supports wireless and IPP v1.0. I've also got a 2019 Brother > MFC-L2750DW. It supports wireless and AirPrint (aka IPP v2.0, pretty > much). Both are auto-discovered by all my (non-embedded) Linux systems, > and I don't need any drivers. The entire installation process of the > Brother went like this: > > 1) unpack from box; > 2) remove packing materials; > 3) install toner and paper; > 4) plug in power; > 5) join wireless network from front panel. > > By the time I got downstairs from where I'd installed the printer, all > the computers in the house had found the new printer and added it as a > device. This includes an Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu laptop, a couple of > Macs, a Windows 10 machine, two Raspberry Pis and an iPad. The only > thing that needed a little work was my Android phone, but that wasn't > any more than "Find printer" then say yes to the Brother printer driver. > > All of this is made possible by three technologies: > > 1) CUPS > 2) Bonjour (mDNS/DNS-SD, typically Avahi under Linux) > 3) IPP > > Bonjour announces that the printer's there, IPP negotiates the printer's > capabilities, and CUPS sends the data in the right format. If even one > of these three is missing, it's endless fighting and pain. > > The Debian packages I have on my desktop system(s) that enable this are: > > avahi-autoipd avahi-daemon avahi-utils cups > cups-browsed cups-bsd cups-client cups-common > cups-core-drivers cups-daemon cups-filters > cups-filters-core-drivers cups-ipp-utils cups-pk-helper > cups-ppdc cups-server-common printer-driver-cups-pdf > printer-driver-gutenprint system-config-printer > system-config-printer-common system-config-printer-udev > > Most of these are installed automatically. I think I had to add > cups-ipp-utils, system-config-printer and (oddly) cups to make this work > seamlessly on the Raspberry Pis. > > * I don't strictly need avahi-autoipd and avahi-utils; the Raspberry Pis > do fine without them. > > * cups-bsd is only needed if your fingers automatically type 'lpr -P' > instead of 'lp -d', as mine do. > > * printer-driver-cups-pdf isn't necessary, but gives you print to PDF > from everywhere. Since CUPS puts every print job into PDF anyway, this > is just a *really* fancy wrapper around 'cat'. > > * printer-driver-gutenprint gives a bit more control to colour printing > for those rare times I need things to be really fiddly. I could do > without for 99% of print jobs. > > All the above did pretty much require me to forget everything I thought > I knew about printer admin. I'm glad I don't need that any more. > > cheers, > Stewart > > --- > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On 2020-06-01 10:14 a.m., Christopher Browne via talk wrote: But I had gotten myself accustomed to the impression that "with CUPS, It Just Works(tm)", so colour me surprised. Has Microsoft pushed back to try to get WinPrinters back to be a thing? I don't think so. Since all printers (except cheap USB-only disposable ones) need to print over wireless from an iPad/iPhone, it's got much simpler. Different, yes, but simpler for the user. I've got a 2012-vintage Epson WorkForce WF7520 large-format inkjet AiO. It supports wireless and IPP v1.0. I've also got a 2019 Brother MFC-L2750DW. It supports wireless and AirPrint (aka IPP v2.0, pretty much). Both are auto-discovered by all my (non-embedded) Linux systems, and I don't need any drivers. The entire installation process of the Brother went like this: 1) unpack from box; 2) remove packing materials; 3) install toner and paper; 4) plug in power; 5) join wireless network from front panel. By the time I got downstairs from where I'd installed the printer, all the computers in the house had found the new printer and added it as a device. This includes an Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu laptop, a couple of Macs, a Windows 10 machine, two Raspberry Pis and an iPad. The only thing that needed a little work was my Android phone, but that wasn't any more than "Find printer" then say yes to the Brother printer driver. All of this is made possible by three technologies: 1) CUPS 2) Bonjour (mDNS/DNS-SD, typically Avahi under Linux) 3) IPP Bonjour announces that the printer's there, IPP negotiates the printer's capabilities, and CUPS sends the data in the right format. If even one of these three is missing, it's endless fighting and pain. The Debian packages I have on my desktop system(s) that enable this are: avahi-autoipd avahi-daemon avahi-utils cups cups-browsed cups-bsd cups-client cups-common cups-core-drivers cups-daemon cups-filters cups-filters-core-drivers cups-ipp-utils cups-pk-helper cups-ppdc cups-server-common printer-driver-cups-pdf printer-driver-gutenprint system-config-printer system-config-printer-common system-config-printer-udev Most of these are installed automatically. I think I had to add cups-ipp-utils, system-config-printer and (oddly) cups to make this work seamlessly on the Raspberry Pis. * I don't strictly need avahi-autoipd and avahi-utils; the Raspberry Pis do fine without them. * cups-bsd is only needed if your fingers automatically type 'lpr -P' instead of 'lp -d', as mine do. * printer-driver-cups-pdf isn't necessary, but gives you print to PDF from everywhere. Since CUPS puts every print job into PDF anyway, this is just a *really* fancy wrapper around 'cat'. * printer-driver-gutenprint gives a bit more control to colour printing for those rare times I need things to be really fiddly. I could do without for 99% of print jobs. All the above did pretty much require me to forget everything I thought I knew about printer admin. I'm glad I don't need that any more. cheers, Stewart --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On 2020-06-01 10:14 AM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote: At that time, interoperability with printers and Linux was very much fraught with troubles. Those were the days of WinModems and WinPrinters where Microsoft was trying to capture market by making sure that lots of devices would ONLY talk to Windows(tm) Back in those days, I was running OS/2 and knew enough to avoid those Winmodems and printers. BTW, I also had a FAX modem, so I faxed myself a sheet that I signed several times. I could then paste my signature on documents which would then be faxed out again. Back then I was using Faxworks and Post Road Mailer, which worked very well together, for handling faxes & email. For example, I could fax to email or a received fax could automagically be emailed out. Or a received email could be sent out via fax. I essentially had a fax server. This was way back in the mid - late 90's. There were a lot of things that could be done in OS/2 that I have not seen elsewhere. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
I have a Deskjet 2130 that I paid pennies for, and it works on my Ubuntu, works on a RedHat Enterprise Linux, works on the chromebooks... It's my first printer in a lng time, because now I have kids in the school and a printer is essential, but I usually never had issues with CUPS. Mauro http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521 Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God. Em seg., 1 de jun. de 2020 às 11:15, Christopher Browne via talk < talk@gtalug.org> escreveu: > On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 at 09:26, Peter King via talk wrote: > >> Sad days when people who voluntarily use Linux and are tech-savvy just >> give up on printing -- printing! -- because it isn't worth the effort. >> There shouldn't *be* any effort by now; it's 2020, for goodness sakes. >> > > I guess I'm surprised a bit by this; my experiences have some parallels > and non-parallels... > > Once upon a time, I did really scary printer hacking, had a project where > I built a component that would put bitmaps of peoples' signatures into > documents in a print queue so that printed reports would have the > Lovely Signatures. There was a step weirder; one of the print queues > went to a fax machine, as the task was sending price sheets out to > customers (with the Lovely Signature at the bottom). That was, like > circa 1992. > > At that time, interoperability with printers and Linux was very much > fraught with troubles. Those were the days of WinModems and > WinPrinters where Microsoft was trying to capture market by > making sure that lots of devices would ONLY talk to Windows(tm) > > Then, some time in the 20-oughts, (after 2000), I encountered CUPS > and had the "breath of fresh air" of it being pretty much dead easy to > configure printer usage on Linux. Each time I have gotten a new PC > at work has been a point in time where I configured CUPS to talk to > a couple of our printers. > > And my reaction, of late, has been, "It Just Works(tm)" After the > old scar tissue from the '90s, it has been just totally easy. I kinda > suspect I have had things Dialed To Easy, in view that what I'm > inevitably connecting to are networked printers that were to a degree > selected to be simple for our varied platform staff (a few Windows, > quite a lot of MacOS, and quite a lot of Linux) to connect to, so > that I'm not treading any ground that's new to anyone local. > > But I had gotten myself accustomed to the impression that > "with CUPS, It Just Works(tm)", so colour me surprised. > > Has Microsoft pushed back to try to get WinPrinters back to be a > thing? I'm curious as to what may have worsened in the last few > years. > -- > When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the > question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" > --- > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 at 09:26, Peter King via talk wrote: > Sad days when people who voluntarily use Linux and are tech-savvy just > give up on printing -- printing! -- because it isn't worth the effort. > There shouldn't *be* any effort by now; it's 2020, for goodness sakes. > I guess I'm surprised a bit by this; my experiences have some parallels and non-parallels... Once upon a time, I did really scary printer hacking, had a project where I built a component that would put bitmaps of peoples' signatures into documents in a print queue so that printed reports would have the Lovely Signatures. There was a step weirder; one of the print queues went to a fax machine, as the task was sending price sheets out to customers (with the Lovely Signature at the bottom). That was, like circa 1992. At that time, interoperability with printers and Linux was very much fraught with troubles. Those were the days of WinModems and WinPrinters where Microsoft was trying to capture market by making sure that lots of devices would ONLY talk to Windows(tm) Then, some time in the 20-oughts, (after 2000), I encountered CUPS and had the "breath of fresh air" of it being pretty much dead easy to configure printer usage on Linux. Each time I have gotten a new PC at work has been a point in time where I configured CUPS to talk to a couple of our printers. And my reaction, of late, has been, "It Just Works(tm)" After the old scar tissue from the '90s, it has been just totally easy. I kinda suspect I have had things Dialed To Easy, in view that what I'm inevitably connecting to are networked printers that were to a degree selected to be simple for our varied platform staff (a few Windows, quite a lot of MacOS, and quite a lot of Linux) to connect to, so that I'm not treading any ground that's new to anyone local. But I had gotten myself accustomed to the impression that "with CUPS, It Just Works(tm)", so colour me surprised. Has Microsoft pushed back to try to get WinPrinters back to be a thing? I'm curious as to what may have worsened in the last few years. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On Mon, Jun 01, 2020 at 12:46:16AM -0400, William Park via talk wrote: > I've given up printing from Linux. I go to Windows 10 laptop, scp the > file from Linux, then print from there. Always works. Yeah, my workaround is to scp files over to MacOS and print from there, which also works reliably and transparently, with no kerfuffle. Sad days when people who voluntarily use Linux and are tech-savvy just give up on printing -- printing! -- because it isn't worth the effort. There shouldn't *be* any effort by now; it's 2020, for goodness sakes. -- Peter King peter.k...@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ = GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42 signature.asc Description: PGP signature --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 08:56:39PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote: > PostScript, in new printers, is extremely rare. Even Brother stopped doing > BRSCRIPT a few years back. More of them speak PDF directly. Brother advertises "PostScript 3 Emulation" which I thought was code for using Ghostscript or whatever. The problem with my Lexmark printer is that it gags on lots of pdfs, including those generated from tex/xetex, which is not acceptable. -- Peter King peter.k...@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ = GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42 signature.asc Description: PGP signature --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes
On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 07:12:33PM -0400, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote: > >Ah yes, the "modem testing problem" redux. Exactly! >I've had good luck with an HP "Color LaserJetPro MFP M177fw", but I >don't enjoy a system where you buy a printer and only then find out if >you have to return it or not. Agreed. It's a scandal that something as basic as printing should still be such a haphazard mess. -- Peter King peter.k...@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ = GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42 signature.asc Description: PGP signature --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
