How to decide which printer driver to use in CUPS?
Does anyone else suffer from this dilemma? Whenever I install my HP Laserjet 1320 printer I wonder which of about a dozen or so alternatives that CUPS offers to use. For HP 1320 I see:- HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 Simplified (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/Postscript (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs pcl3, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320, hpcups 3.11.7 (en) There's no 'help' to click on to give any guidance, I *guess* I can't use the Postscript ones as my printer doesn't have Postscript (and, yes there really are three apparently identical Postscript entries). But how do I decide between that odd mix of pcl3, hpijs and hpcups? -- Chris Green
On 22-Mar-2012 Chris Green wrote:
Does anyone else suffer from this dilemma? Whenever I install my HP Laserjet 1320 printer I wonder which of about a dozen or so alternatives that CUPS offers to use.
For HP 1320 I see:- HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 Simplified (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/Postscript (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs pcl3, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320, hpcups 3.11.7 (en)
There's no 'help' to click on to give any guidance, I *guess* I can't use the Postscript ones as my printer doesn't have Postscript (and, yes there really are three apparently identical Postscript entries). But how do I decide between that odd mix of pcl3, hpijs and hpcups?
-- Chris Green
Chris, are you absultely sure that *your* HP LJ 1320 does not have PostScript? My 1300 certainly does, and I see from the User Manual (on-line on the HP website) that the 1320 also has PostScript (well, PS emulation, like my 1300; but it works fine when I just squirt a raw Postscript file at it). See: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/ CoreRedirect.jsp?redirectReason=DocIndexPDF&prodSeriesId=410622& targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport2.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs %2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00208215%2Fc00208215.pdf [Also = http://tinyurl.com/7rjuy8e ] When that PDF file comes up, click on: "Printer specifications", then on: "Printer capacities and ratings", then at the bottom of that page (page 129) you will read: PCL PCL 5e, PCL 6 PS PostScript Level 2 emulation showing the two languages that the Manual says that the printer supports. One basic test is to switch the printer on, and then squirt a PostScript file, say "myfile.ps", using cat myfile.ps > /dev/lp0 (or whatever the port is that your printer is connected to). In my experience, CUPS can be very tricky to get working, especially for "raw" files (i.e. sent to the printer as-is). The old LP system was much more straightforward. When you are printing "raw", the main advantage of systems like LP or CUPS is that they send files to the printer via a queue directory, so that you can send more files while still waiting for the first file to finish printing, which the above "cat" command would not do -- though you could wrap it in a script which would look at a "queue" dirrectory, say "mylpq", take the least recent file therein and cat it to the printer (and stash it in a backup directory and delete it from the mylpq directory; and if it gets a succesful return from 'cat' then delete the backup). Hoping this helps, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@wlandres.net> Date: 22-Mar-2012 Time: 21:03:51 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------
On 22 Mar 21:03, Ted Harding wrote: <snippity class="quiteabit" />
One basic test is to switch the printer on, and then squirt a PostScript file, say "myfile.ps", using
cat myfile.ps > /dev/lp0
(or whatever the port is that your printer is connected to).
Not if it's a network printer you don't! ;)
In my experience, CUPS can be very tricky to get working, especially for "raw" files (i.e. sent to the printer as-is). The old LP system was much more straightforward.
The old system was lpr, not lp... lp is the binary provided by cups that acts almost like lpr. CUPS is easy to configure as a raw printer, but not all apps print "postscript" any more, some print pdf instead - so having something like cups that will automagically translate it in the background is "rather handy". Also, most apps these days will automatically be able to find cups printers, whereas to use lpr they need to be told to spool to the lpr driver and that they have to print as postscript level 2.
When you are printing "raw", the main advantage of systems like LP or CUPS is that they send files to the printer via a queue directory, so that you can send more files while still waiting for the first file to finish printing, which the above "cat" command would not do -- though you could wrap it in a script which would look at a "queue" dirrectory, say "mylpq", take the least recent file therein and cat it to the printer (and stash it in a backup directory and delete it from the mylpq directory; and if it gets a succesful return from 'cat' then delete the backup).
In my experience, cups just works. But even if you don't want to use cups, then there's always lprng + magicfilter as an alternative. I would *never* recommend reinventing the (several) existing wheels for printing, there's too many things that can (and will) go wrong, and then you're stuck with no support as no one is going to want to trawl through your hacky print spooler code and try to work out what the heck you've got completely totally wrong. Cheers, -- Brett Parker
Brett Parker <iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk>
On 22 Mar 21:03, Ted Harding wrote:
In my experience, CUPS can be very tricky to get working, especially for "raw" files (i.e. sent to the printer as-is). The old LP system was much more straightforward.
The old system was lpr, not lp... lp is the binary provided by cups that acts almost like lpr.
I'm pretty sure lp was for line printing, lpr was Line Printer Remote. [...]
I would *never* recommend reinventing the (several) existing wheels for printing, there's too many things that can (and will) go wrong, and then you're stuck with no support as no one is going to want to trawl through your hacky print spooler code and try to work out what the heck you've got completely totally wrong.
How many people even need a spooler? Most of the time, it would be enough to have a filter that throws it through gs with the right options (which will handle most PDFs these days) and sends the output to /dev/lp0 or whatever. Simple, stupid and usually works, but is much easier to debug when it doesn't. cups and even lprng are both overkill for nearly everyone, really. I wouldn't be surprised if the time spent troubleshooting their artificially-intelligent choices almost always outweighs the time saved not setting the options manually. But if you need to print to a variety of printers around various networks with autodiscovery and stuff like that, CUPS is probably a fine choice. It has its place. Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 09:03:56PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:
On 22-Mar-2012 Chris Green wrote:
Does anyone else suffer from this dilemma? Whenever I install my HP Laserjet 1320 printer I wonder which of about a dozen or so alternatives that CUPS offers to use.
For HP 1320 I see:- HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 Simplified (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/Postscript (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs pcl3, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320, hpcups 3.11.7 (en)
There's no 'help' to click on to give any guidance, I *guess* I can't use the Postscript ones as my printer doesn't have Postscript (and, yes there really are three apparently identical Postscript entries). But how do I decide between that odd mix of pcl3, hpijs and hpcups?
-- Chris Green
Chris, are you absultely sure that *your* HP LJ 1320 does not have PostScript? My 1300 certainly does, and I see from the User Manual (on-line on the HP website) that the 1320 also has PostScript (well, PS emulation, like my 1300; but it works fine when I just squirt a raw Postscript file at it). See:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/ CoreRedirect.jsp?redirectReason=DocIndexPDF&prodSeriesId=410622& targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport2.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs %2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00208215%2Fc00208215.pdf
[Also = http://tinyurl.com/7rjuy8e ]
When that PDF file comes up, click on: "Printer specifications", then on: "Printer capacities and ratings", then at the bottom of that page (page 129) you will read:
PCL PCL 5e, PCL 6 PS PostScript Level 2 emulation
showing the two languages that the Manual says that the printer supports.
One basic test is to switch the printer on, and then squirt a PostScript file, say "myfile.ps", using
cat myfile.ps > /dev/lp0
(or whatever the port is that your printer is connected to).
In my experience, CUPS can be very tricky to get working, especially for "raw" files (i.e. sent to the printer as-is). The old LP system was much more straightforward.
I've no problem getting it working, works like clockwork every time I [re-]install it, it's just that I always wonder if the different drivers make any difference. -- Chris Green
participants (4)
-
Brett Parker -
Chris Green -
MJ Ray -
Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net