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Re: Wonderful!
by Andreas on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @05:55
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out of the dark ages! .. really?!?! .. what about printer support?
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Re: Wonderful!
by Robi on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @03:07
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there's a good description on www.cups.org. As Jon already said cups together with the gimpprint drivers make a quite good printing system. I'm using it with a hp970cxi and I'm happy with the results... You should give it a try. What distribution do you use?
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Re: Wonderful!
by Andreas on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @04:21
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yeah! but the printer world "outside" the domain of hp is still in the darkages and have always been
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Re: Wonderful!
by Geir on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @04:32
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Even inside the HP domain as well. And CUPS can be fairly shaky with Samba in a mixed environment. Not happy with CUPS at all
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Re: Wonderful!
by Jon on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @04:42
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Not true at all.
At I mentioned in my previous reply, gimp-print is a collection of printer drivers for many inkjet and laser printers. Take a look at their supported printers list:
http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Supported_Printers.php3
I can personally vouch for the excellent quality of their Epson inkjet drivers.
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Re: Wonderful!
by stuart_farnan on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @04:46
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I have a Samsung ML 6060N, network printer, apparently it supports linux, but the instructions for their including software are terrible, in fact, non-existent. So basically, does anyone know how to make this work with linux?
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Re: Wonderful!
by Andreas on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @05:48
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I have a mita 570 laserprinter ... no support! hardware support for linux is not good but it's getting better and better
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Re: Wonderful!
by Jon on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @07:10
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One of the reason Epson inkjets and decent HP laserjets are well supported is that they speak a command language (ESC/P / PCL). Write a driver for that command language, and you support all the printers which understand it. Similar to having a modem which understands the AT command set.
The problem is that many cheap modern printers are 'winprinters'. Just like with 'winmodems', they have stripped out of all the complicated electronics, and make the computer do all the processing. This makes writing drivers for them much much more compilicated.
Do a bit of research the next time you are buying a product, to check that it isn't a crippled 'winproduct'.
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Re: Wonderful!
by Andreas on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @07:44
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personly I never buy hardware without linux support ... the printer isnt mine
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Re: Wonderful!
by Michael Goffioul on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @06:22
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I don't want to answer all the posts. I'll just try to give some clues. For people having printing problem, some mailing lists exists and we'd be glad to help you if we can (http://cups.sourceforge.net, http://printing.kde.org).
If you're looking for printer support, the first thing you should do is to have a look at http://www.linuxprinting.org. This site has a huge DB about printing under Linux, and you can also download drivers from there. Now, about the printer support under Linux, let me state that the first reason about the poor support is mainly due to the printer manufacturers themselves. So I'm tempted to say that if you really want to complain, send an e-mail to your printer manufacturer. This situation is slowly changing, and some big manufacturer has begun to support Linux. But in most cases, the printer protocol is proprietary and drivers can only be made be reverse engineering, which takes a lot of time.
Being in the printing world for quite some time, I can tell you however that many printers *are* supported under Linux. All PS printers of course, PCL printers (3,4,5, at least), Epson printers, Lexmark printers, Canon printers, even so-called "winprinters" are partially supported (like the PPA printers from HP). In many cases, your printer *is* supported, the only thing is to know how, and that's where linuxprinting.org is useful. Of course not *all* printers are supported, especially some "exotic" ones, because they are not commonly used, especially by people that would be tempted to write a driver for them. In that case, the only possibility is to ask the manufacturer.
I'd like also to add that KDEPrint is not a low level library, it's mainly intended to be a user interface between KDE applications and a print spooler. In no way it deals with supporting this or that printer, this is the job of the print spooler, and KDEPrint doesn't aim to help there.
Bye.
Michael.
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Re: Wonderful!
by Jon on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @06:48
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Postscript printers have (obviously) always been supported well.
For the newer printers, you have a lot of choice... particularly with tools like gimp-print developing decent support for modern inkjets and lazer printers.
CUPS + gimp-print is already the default printing system in Mandrake. I hope it spreads through all the other Linux distos, and all the other UNIces as well.
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Re: Wonderful!
by John on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @07:34
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You don't need gimp-print with cups. I think most distro's ship the cupsomatic backend now, and linuxprinting.org gives you an enormous database of printers to choose from to generate printer specific PPD files that make use of it. I've got this config working for an OfficeJet K60 and the quality is as good as Windows. Didn't need gimp-print at all. I did need the HP ptal driver kit to get the actual connection to the OfficeJet working, but that has nothing to do with KDE or the printing part per-se, just the connection over USB.
John
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Re: Wonderful!
by Michael Goffioul on Thursday 06/Dec/2001, @09:15
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Some of the drivers from Foomatic are based on gimp-print. Actually, the stp driver for ghostscript IS gimp-print. So you may still use gimp-print without knowing it (gimp-print driver is usually compiled in ghostscript in recent Linux distros).
Michael.
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Re: Wonderful!
by Michael Goffioul on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @06:58
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http://www.linuxprinting.org
There's support for hundreds of printers, usually at high quality, along with
detailed information on how to get your printer working under Linux. Gimp-driver
is even known to give better print quality then windows drivers for some
printers.
Coupled with Foomatic, you can get support for your printer under CUPS, LPR,
LPRng, PDQ, and PPR.
If that's not printer support...
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gimp drivers for an idiot
by Rebecca Kraft on Monday 10/Jan/2005, @08:00
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Hi all,
Along the lines of the dark ages... I speak of course only of my knowledge. I'm having a bit of trouble finding info that I can understand on gimp drivers (I'm a geologist and I'm much better with rocks...). I have several HPs that haven't worked well since an HP 120nr was introduced to them. Now I have some font issues, like fonts printing too thick. I've looked up the supported printers list for gimp and only one of my printers is on it. Does this mean I shouldn't try gimp? Is there another option at all? If you answer my query, do please use the smallest words you can, this geek-speak is new to me.
Thanks,
Rebecca
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Re: Wonderful!
by Paul Seamons on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @07:52
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I'll respond to this rather than the other respondents of this node.
<P>
All of the other tools that already exist work fine, I can get network and local printers to work great. But I should have to go to http://www.linuxprinting.org to get my printer to work. There should be a straight forward, easy to find, consistant place to setup the printer.
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Re: Wonderful!
by Paul Seamons on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @07:55
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First post here (can you tell). Forget the duplicate post and that "should" should be "shouldn't".
Sigh... (Bangs head against desk)...
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Re: Wonderful!
by Michael Goffioul on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @08:26
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Recent distributions include a package containing a bunch of drivers for
many printers (taken from linuxprinting.org). In that case, you don't need
to go there, all available drivers are listed when installing a printer.
You have 2 ways around: either you install all possible drivers on your
HD, but the major drawbacks are waste of space and new printers not supported,
or you can simply download the driver from linuxprinting.org (not a very
big deal) and use the "Other" button when a driver is requested in kdeprint.
Michael.
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Re: Wonderful!
by E on Wednesday 05/Dec/2001, @23:45
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I can't understand what the fuzz is about. I've used linux for years, and printing
has never been a problem. Still, if it makes you happy, congrats...
E.
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