On Fri, 23 Nov 2001 11:51:01 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Yep. Use gimp-print drivers for CUPS, ghostscript or the GIMP if your printer is supported. I hear the latest debians have the ghostscript drivers as standard.
Have you actually ever installed CUPS? I first of all tried using the version that came with the cover CD on Linux-Format mag. That installed and ran, but it only had a selection of about a dozen drivers, which (I gather from reading the documentation) were only intended as 'sample' drivers. When I went through the ghastly experience of installing Mandrake 8, I noticed that this had CUPS installed also, but had stacks and stacks of drivers, including something called 'DJ930C foomatic+stp-4.1.5(GIMP-Print)', which seemed to give better results than anything else with my 930C printer. Since I managed to find the relevant .ppd file buried in Mandrake, I thought that it would be a simple matter to copy the ppd file over to Slack and the Linux-Format version of CUPS. No such luck. The file was there in the index (once I'd restarted CUPS) but it wouldn't print at all.
Then I removed that version of CUPS from Slack and tried installing the Mandrake .rpms (having converted them to .tgz) but that was a complete disaster. Sure, lots and lots of drivers now listed, but NONE of them would produce a test print.
I'm quite happy to accept that my intelligence is below normal for this sort of thing, but I've found the whole CUPS experience frustrating in the extreme so far. Today I found Turboprint after a search on Google.com. I didn't hold out a lot of hope, given my success to date, but I've managed to get it to work with the standard lpr that comes with Slackware and the colour photos that I've been getting today from it are as good as any I've had thus far. Best of all, I'm now free of Mandrake! The only down-side to Turboprint is that it's crippled shareware, i.e., it prints a big 'this is turboprint' sort of banner across the colour pictures. I didn't think that that sort of thing was acceptable under Linux?
I'd be very interested to hear how other people have got on with this kind of thing.
Gerald.