Author Topic: Cups or not Cups  (Read 20175 times)

Einar Lygre

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Cups or not Cups
« on: November 05, 2013, 11:06:46 pm »
I intend to buy me a color laser printer. At the moment I think of Epson Aculaser C2900N, or Canon i-Sensys LBP7750CDN or Canon i-Sensys 7680Cx. The problem is that there are no printer drivers for eCS, and the printers are not in the Gutenprint list for supported printers. I guess the printers are too new. But all of them have emulation for Adobe Postscript 3. So my question is if I can print directly from eCS using postscript and forget about Cups or do I have to copy my print jobs to a common volume with MS, reboot and print from there as I often have to do today.

Alex Taylor

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2013, 02:01:14 am »
As long as the printers have hardware Postscript emulation then you should be fine printing from eCS without the need for CUPS.

(That said, certain applications nowadays like qpdfview require CUPS for printing in any case. But if you're not using CUPS now then you won't miss anything that you aren't already.)

Whether you can use the printer's own native PPD or have to use a 'generic' Postscript driver is a bit of a question mark, but IMHO that's not really a serious issue; printing should work fine in either case.

eirik

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2013, 01:05:51 am »
I wish the world of printers behaved as nicely as Alex claims.  Unfortunately, they don't.  I have a Dell printer at home, and even got the appropriate ppd file.  But printing does not work (for example regarding pdf files the printed document comes out as the aschii version of the pdf).

On the positive side - at work we have Ricoh printers, and they are well-behaved.  I have no familiarity with Canon printers, and therefore I dare not provide any advice to Einar on this matter except two:
  • If you have a notebook, bring it and ask to hook it up to the Canon demo printers in the store.  Of course, that is not an option if you buy online. 
  • Check out the experiences of other eCS users on the named Canon printer -- and this site is one of the best places to that.
Good luck, and Einar (and others) please keep us informed about your findings!
Eirik

ivan

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2013, 01:15:29 am »
Are you looking at local (connected to the computer you are printing from) or network printing?

If it is local you stand a good chance of it working, if it over a network forget it, unless you want to jump through hoops.  I have been unable to get any network printer to print jobs directly from any OS/2 computer using cups or samba to our password protected print servers.  Any printing we need is done by printing to file with the resultant prn file being sent to win XP running in VirtualBox on an OS/2 machine and from there to the print servers.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2013, 07:42:47 am »
Quote
If it is local you stand a good chance of it working, if it over a network forget it, unless you want to jump through hoops.

Actually, that depends a lot on the printer. A while back, I helped my brother to get a Canon MP620 multifunction printer to print. It took some messing around, and a lot of help (especially from Paul Smedley), to get CUPS to go. After trying the different options, network connected (wireless) turned out to be the best option (it requires the bjnp.exe backend, which has never been made available at netlabs, AFAIK). We never did try to get the scanner to work (ran out of time).

Recently, my neighbor decided that he was going to replace his two HP printers, so he did, and he gave me the old ones (great neighbor). One is a HP Photosmart C4180, USB connected printer. That was harder to get working than the HP Photosmart D110a, which connects with wireless networking (the socket.exe backend). The usb.exe backend from Paul's web site is required to make the C4180, and any other USB attached printer, work properly ( I think).

FWIW, I think that HP printers are the most likely to work, wireless, or USB connected. I can also make both of them scan successfully (using the sane command line), but that is harder to get going. I did have the C4180 scanning from TAME (the one that came with the first eCS 2.2. beta), but when I tried to get TAME to scan from the D110a, all TAME scanning quit working, and I haven't found the trick to get it working again on the C4180. Both still work with the sane command line.

One GREAT thing about the D110a (running wireless networking), is that I can use Firefox to browse the built in web page, and one of the options is to use what they call "webscan", which scans whatever is in the scanner, and then you can simply save the picture, just like you would for a picture from the internet. I don't know if other printers have that feature, and I am pretty sure that the printer needs to be network connected for that to work.

I am not sure what printer my neighbor got to replace the old printers (they are two of the same - probably HP -  one for work, and one for home). When he gets home (could be a couple of days), I will try to find out, and see if I can get them to work with eCS.

One other BIG advantage of using a network connected printer, is that you can use it from any machine, that has an appropriate driver installed. That includes from inside of a virtual machine, without worrying about connecting to a host machine (the printer is it's own host).

CUPSWIZ (the GUI for CUPS setup), sort of works, but it needs a LOT of work to get it right. The main thing is to set the name, and description, to something less than 8 characters, or it will not match what gets set in the CUPS configuration. Then, both HP printers wanted to use a name, and description, that is about 25 characters long. The result was that both got the same Physical name (the first 8 characters of the description, I think), which resulted in two drivers, for the same printer, rather than two printers, with separate drivers. Needless to say, that didn't work at all.

The best part of all of this, is that I can now retire my old Canon i960 printer, and my ancient Epson ES1000c SCSI scanner. That frees up a good chunk of desk space, and it didn't cost me more than about 30 sheets of paper (testing them).   :)

eirik

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2013, 10:38:08 am »
Ivan asks if I have network access or direct printing to the printer.  Both the Dell 3100 cn at home and the Ricoh printers at work are connected on the net.  I use an lpr script to connect to the printers sending the file to be printed to the printer's ip address.  In case of the Ricoh printers it works, in the case of the Dell printer at home it does  not (I get a connection, but the print output is as mentioned before the raw aschii text of the pdf (or postscript) file I print.  Plain *.txt files do not print at all on the Dell.

Eirik

Doug Bissett

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #6 on: November 09, 2013, 08:28:14 am »
Quote
I am not sure what printer my neighbor got to replace the old printers

Okay, what he got was a HP ENVY 5530. I can make it print with USB, or wireless networking. The drivers that are available in CUPS, don't seem to match it perfectly (but I only tried a couple of them). The output seems to be quite good though.

I then tried scanning. Using the sane command line fails. I was able to scan while connected to the network, by using the built in web page, and Firefox. There is a security thing that disables scanning, by default. After I got that enabled, I was able to scan, using the webscan feature. I still get the error when trying to use the sane command line.

The bottom line is, that it looks like printing will work okay, using USB or wireless, but it may take some experimenting to find the best driver combinations. It seems that it needs HPLIP 3.13.7, for proper support, and ours is currently at 3.12.10a.

Scanning (using sane, or TAME) may work, but I think the security feature is blocking it with USB, and network connections. With some experimenting, it may be possible to make it work (I didn't want to get too serious about experimenting, in case I messed up my neighbor's settings). Worst case is that scanning will work, when using wireless networking, and a web browser (after enabling that in the settings).

Paul Smedley

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #7 on: November 09, 2013, 01:47:34 pm »
HPLIP 3.13.3 exists on my system - I can easily bump it to the current version, there just hasn't been a whole lot of demand for it....

Doug Bissett

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #8 on: November 09, 2013, 09:16:21 pm »
HPLIP 3.13.3 exists on my system - I can easily bump it to the current version, there just hasn't been a whole lot of demand for it....

It seems that HPAIO has something from HPLIP 3.13.3, but HPLIP is only at 3.12.10a. Apparently, the latest in Linux is 3.13.11. The "new" HP ENVY 5530, that I was able to test, needs HPLIP 3.13.7 (according to a Linux page that I found). I suspect that other "new" (read "currently available") printers will also need a later version. It looks like users should be looking for clearance sales, to get some left over models, that are already supported.

I suspect that there has not been a lot of demand, because OS/2 (eCS) users have become very wary of getting new printers (and even more wary of getting new scanners), before somebody else posts that they actually work. From what I have seen, HP printers seem to be very compatible, but some of the new "gee whiz" things may not work with older drivers. It also makes it difficult to figure out which the best substitute driver is.

HPAIO, on the other hand, looks like it needs some serious updating, or something different is required (possibly "digital sending"). I don't know if Linux will support the new scanners. It appears that there is some sort of security thing added, which blocks scanning. Scanning, using the built in webscan tool (network only) works, but only after the user goes into the settings, and enables it. Unfortunately, I had to give the HP ENVY 5530 back, but I can probably get my hands on it again, if there is something new to test.

Einar Lygre

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #9 on: November 10, 2013, 01:09:58 pm »
Thank you for all your answers, but I must say I was most happy after Alex Taylors comment to my question. Now I don't know. I have a Lexmark X5150 printer, and that I always have to use under Windows. I also have a Brother HL2070N b&w laser printer. I can use it under eCS, but if I want some better printing (pictures) I have to print under Wind. I hoped I this time could find a color laser printer that I can use under eCS with full printing quality and a reasonable speed (about 20 s/min). It looks like I have to search further.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #10 on: November 10, 2013, 08:15:01 pm »
I think you may be restricting yourself, unnecessarily, by insisting on a laser printer. Ink jets are far more common, and it should be easier to find one that is known to work. Unfortunately, there are a number of very inaccurate lists of what does, or doesn't, work with CUPS. I don't know if that is because people can't get them to work, or if they just can't figure out how to set them up properly (probably a combination). Most likely, somebody bought a new printer, and couldn't get it to go because CUPS had not been updated to support that model. Some time later, the printer is supported, and the list never gets updated (probably no way to do that, in most cases).

Then, we have the problem where eCUPS is lagging behind the mainstream development, but printers exist in the market for only a short period of time. This page seems to have good information for HP printers: http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/release_notes.html. Don't forget to start at the 3.12.10 version, unless Paul updates HPLIP. There are a number of LaserJet printers listed, but there is no guarantee that they will work in OS/2 (eCS), until you try them. Since HP appears to be very compatible, there is a pretty good chance that a printer that is listed, will work.

Paul Smedley

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #11 on: November 11, 2013, 12:01:25 pm »
I have built latest hplip - I just need to find time to test and package it.

HP is my recommended brand of printer for eCS - as there drivers are kept up to date for linux and are opensource.  gutenprint is lagging - canon/epson seem to only be supported by gutenprint.

R.M. Klippstein

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #12 on: November 11, 2013, 06:59:46 pm »
Has anybody been able to get a Samsung CLP-365w to work in any fashion (cups or other method) with eCS? I managed to get a Samsung CLP-310 to finally work by "butchering up" a ppd but the 310 died and was not worth the cost of a new fuser unit. But I've been unable to do the same with the CLP-365w so I have to stick with Linux for anything that needs printing.
Thanks for ANY possible solutions!

klipp

Paul Smedley

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #13 on: November 12, 2013, 02:32:06 am »
Has anybody been able to get a Samsung CLP-365w to work in any fashion (cups or other method) with eCS? I managed to get a Samsung CLP-310 to finally work by "butchering up" a ppd but the 310 died and was not worth the cost of a new fuser unit. But I've been unable to do the same with the CLP-365w so I have to stick with Linux for anything that needs printing.
Thanks for ANY possible solutions!

In theory this can work with foo2qpdl - see http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/forum/read.php?77,3662,3662

If there is interest and commitment to testing the results, I can look at building the latest source.

R.M. Klippstein

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Re: Cups or not Cups
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2013, 05:12:45 am »
Hi Paul, thanks for the reply, I've screwed around with Foo2qpdl and can make it work in CUPS but only to print a test page (which it does correctly) but the age old problem of creating a desktop printer object returns as it needs a "rastertosamsungspic" file which OS/2 can understand. I've tried to "dummy up a ppd" like I did with the Sansung clp-310, which I eventually got to work, but "no cigar" with this CLP-365w!

Your response on June 13, 2013 seems to be accurate:
"You need to find an opensource driver for the printer.  Unless Samsung have released sourcecode to rastertosamsunsplc, you're screwed."!

Its a shame, because Samsung has finally put a very reasonable, hi quality color printer that has remiedied the faults of its predecessor the CLP-310.
------------ any new suggestions?--------

klipp