OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Einar Lygre on June 22, 2015, 09:42:46 pm

Title: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 22, 2015, 09:42:46 pm
I have bought a new printer: Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5190. For the first time for many years I can print in color from eCS, and I am using postscript (psprint.drv and PPD from EPSON). But there is a problem that force me to do the heavy printing in WIN8: The printing is extremely slow. In doble sided printing the first page starts printing 40 sec after sent to the printer and then 12 sec. later the second page is printed. I am going to print 100 copies of the same doble sided letter. Then the next copy also start 40 sec after the first copy is printet and side two of that copy another 12 sec later, and so on. That means that hundred copies take about one hour. I am printing from Lucide 1.3.5 GA.
Printing the PDF-file generated by Scribus in WIN8 is done in about 15 minutes. I guess the PDF-reader in WIN 8 is called Windows Reader.
Any ideas about how to speed up the printing process?
Title: Re: Unexeptable priner speed.
Post by: ivan on June 23, 2015, 12:24:12 am
Are you printing each complete double sided page separately?

Would it be quicker to print all 100 of side one and then turn them over and print all 100 of side two?

With most printers that will do double sided printing it is usually only for the odd document and not a long print run.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 23, 2015, 01:36:53 am
No, it does not help. It will take longer time. Each page is printed as if it is a complete new job, therefore it takes so long time to start each page. In this case it takes about 30 sec. to start printing each page. If I should turn them over and start again it still will take 30 sec for each page. And that in stead of 12 sec for page number 2.
I think everything is started over again for each page, that includes downloading the fonts to the printer.
Title: Re: Unexeptable priner speed.
Post by: ivan on June 23, 2015, 03:14:11 am
I would think there should be something about the number of copies in the print dialogue or even in the printer setup (something like number of copies as in the attached screen grab).  That does assume that your printer is a real printer and not one that relies on the computer for printing (a winprinter) and also that it has enough memory to hold the print image. 


Edit:
I have now downloaded the manuals for this printer and on a quick run-through this appears to be the modern day version of the old winprinter.  Your computer does all the processing of what you want to print.  Both PCL and PS are software emulations running on the computer with little or no processing power being in the printer itself hence your slow print output. 
All our HP laserjet printers, colour and B&W, all have processors and reasonably large memory on board which means that we can send the raw print data to them and let them do the printing while we get on with other work.
Since your printer is designed to work with windows and the software emulation is tweaked to that end you will find printing through windows will always be faster.   
Title: Re: Unexeptable priner speed.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on June 23, 2015, 06:28:27 am
How does that software emulation work on OS/2? The printer (I have one, too, but a 4090) seems to have PS on board. Also here, it prints at a similar speed to Mac (don't have Windows handy).

What I found is that PostScript support on OS/2 is kind of messed up. There are three PS drivers for the 4090, IBM, eCups and PSPRINT. All seem to work, but with minor differences.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 23, 2015, 11:29:17 am
Hi Ivan.
As you understand, I don't like your answer. If you are right I have wasted money.
But some of the specifications of the printer: Ram: 197MB, Rom: 5MB, Disk: 360 MB, Fonts: 137.  There should be enough processor power for my jobs.
When starting to print a message is displayed: Generating PostScript file. This is done only for the first page. When printing I can see that the processor utilization is about 0,5 %, and that is next to nothing. Writing this answer takes about 4 %. That means that the software emulation must be a very light one.
I get the same behavior printing from OpenOffice - one page -waiting -one page - waiting. I printed a letter without pictures and colors and that was faster, but still waiting between pages.
Now I ask Alex Taylor to comment this.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: ivan on June 23, 2015, 12:52:04 pm
Hi Einar,

OK, I may have downloaded the wrong manual and it was only a quick skim through while I waited for clients nightly backups to complete.  I do hope that your problem can be solved and I am not the bearer of bad news.

Do you get a print dialogue similar to the one in my previous post?  If you do what happens when you up the number of copies?  Normally when we print multiple copies the first page takes a short time to appear (15 seconds) but after that they arrive as fast as the engine can produce them (15 ppm average).  This is using a laser printer, inkjet printers are slower because of their printing method (print head physically moving back and forth across the page as against a laser beam scanning on to a drum).

The one thing I find strange is the message you see <i>Generating PostScript file,</i> what generates this, the printer or the program you are printing from?  I have never seen anything like that with any printing we do and have always assumed that is taken care of by the printer.

I will try and find time to check I have the correct manual for your printer and read it from cover to cover to see if there is anything that might point to a way of speeding up printing for you (assuming I have a quiet night shift tonight).
 
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 23, 2015, 04:42:25 pm
I get the same print dialog as you. I also have a B/W laser printer that prints fast as yours.
The message "Generating PostScript file../i] is displayed by Lucide. I found that by searching for the text using the search program comming with eCS. This is of course because I have selected to use PostScript, and the installed driver for this printer is psprint.drv from Alex Taylor. There is no PCL driver for os2 for this printer
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Alex Taylor on June 24, 2015, 01:06:46 pm
Are printing direct, or using CUPS?
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 24, 2015, 01:16:13 pm
I am not using CUPS. The printing is directly.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Silvan Scherrer on June 24, 2015, 02:11:16 pm
I am not using CUPS. The printing is directly.

Direct means USB or parallel or Network?
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 24, 2015, 03:55:16 pm
USB
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Silvan Scherrer on June 24, 2015, 05:15:54 pm
USB

I wouldn't wonder this is a USB problem. Do you use latest USB drivers?
Do you have a chance to try as network printer?
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Pete on June 25, 2015, 02:55:15 am
Hi Einar

Maybe it is the use of psprint that is slowing down the ps file generation.

Have you tried using the epson PPD file with the IBM ps driver?


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 25, 2015, 02:21:55 pm
I have installed the latest USB-drivers from ArcaNoae. and I now also have set up a network printer and am using the same driver as for the USB connection. The output port is SLPR1 (is that correct?). Anyway I can print using the network, but the speed is the same as with USB connection.
I have not tried using the IBM ps driver yet.
When printing from Lucide the message "Generating PostScript File" last for about 2 sec. Then a message about spooling last for about half a sec. It may be different for bigger files. But anyway it seems to be clear for me that a new print job is started for every page/new copy to be printed. And the time is still about 40 sec from the end of one copy till the start of the next.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Silvan Scherrer on June 25, 2015, 06:10:39 pm
I have installed the latest USB-drivers from ArcaNoae. and I now also have set up a network printer and am using the same driver as for the USB connection. The output port is SLPR1 (is that correct?). Anyway I can print using the network, but the speed is the same as with USB connection.
Hmm SLPR sounds like parallelport. Network is usually a LPD.

regards
Silvan
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on June 25, 2015, 06:17:44 pm
SLPR port is for network and I would have tried that with a ps-driver.

(http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=771.msg7272#msg7272)
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: ivan on June 25, 2015, 08:06:38 pm
Hi Einar,

Being a fairly quiet night last night I was able to have a good read of the printer manual. 

Two things stood out, no Linux drivers and no detailed specifications.  I did manage to find the specifications on the Epson site where they mention 20 ppm single side and 10 ppm double side measured by the ISO standard.  It is noted that these speeds are for windows drivers and that OSx does not have all the features and may not (read will not) get those speeds.

I then went on to look at the print technology used.  It needs quite a lot of processor power and memory just to run the heads and that assumes that the PS and PCL emulation software supplies the page image in exactly the way the print head software expects to see it (this is why there are no Linux drivers and OSx has some problems).

This brings me back to the fact this printer is a sophisticated winprinter, while it will print postscript and PCL it is going to be very slow if anyone uses anything other than windows.

It appears that it is the win drivers that do the the multiple page preparation and send each page to the printer as soon as its buffer is empty.  I have been, so far, unable to find a service manual for the printer which would usually give more information about the printer firmware and what the onboard processor actually does and where it stores all of its font information (HD???).

I don't think you are going to see very much of a speed increase, if any, by changing how it is connected to your computer. USB, WiFi, network cable will all transfer faster than the printer can handle what it considers as non standard input which it then has to convert for use by the print engine.
     
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on June 29, 2015, 10:15:23 pm
Thank you Ivan for all your efforts.

This printer has enough memory: 197 MB Ram and 360 MB hard disk. Rom is 5 MB. That means that the printer normally will not run out of memory.
The printing speed itself is about as in Win8. That means that the time from the start of printing of one page till the end of printing of the same page is about the same. It is the time BETWEEN the pages and copies that is the problem.
I print PS-files directly whit good quality in eCS by using right mouse button and select print. But I can't select to print more than one copy. I should like to try to do the same in Win8, but there isn't any right mouse button selection for printing. It is removed. I have to try to find out how I can do that and see if there is a difference between eCS and Win 8.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Alex Taylor on June 30, 2015, 01:29:11 pm
Does this slow job problem only happen with Lucide?  What about printing from other applications?

Lucide uses a rather unorthodox printing mechanism which is not how most OS/2 programs do things.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Andy Willis on June 30, 2015, 11:31:28 pm
I have installed the latest USB-drivers from ArcaNoae. and I now also have set up a network printer and am using the same driver as for the USB connection. The output port is SLPR1 (is that correct?). Anyway I can print using the network, but the speed is the same as with USB connection.
Hmm SLPR sounds like parallelport. Network is usually a LPD.
regards
Silvan
SLPR is old now but is newer than LPD... I've been using it for network printers for many years and as I recall much easier than LPD to setup.  There is a setting that could affect speed, it uses the newer high speed or LPD compatible which is slower but the one that normally works from what I have found. 
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: Einar Lygre on July 01, 2015, 11:55:14 pm
Yes Alex.
It looks like  the problem only happen with Lucide. It was difficult to find out because I have one document, produced with Scribus, that I ought to print out in 100 copies. Scribus produce a PDF file that gave me all the trouble. Printing it from Win 8 was a dream.
I now have printed an ODT document from OpenOffice 4.  Very good. I then exported the same document as a PDF file and printed it from Lucide. That was an other story. Lucide printed one copy and then told me that the printer was offline - every time, and that was not true. I therefor couldn't really measure the time between copies. But the time between each page was much longer than when printing from OO. There is also a problem with Lucide that it is impossible to set the correct margins, it selects its own. Therefor the question now is if I should install CUPS and use another PDF program/viewer.

The HELP text for SLPR Port settings has a lot of options for communicating with a printer, but most of those fields are not in the ports properties setting. Some of them should boost the performance, but is not available.
In OS2 we have the option to print a file directly by using the right mouse button while pointing at the file. I can then print a Post Script file directly and the result is very good. But there is a problem, I don't have the option to print more than one copy. That is a pity.
Title: Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
Post by: guzzi on July 02, 2015, 06:53:15 pm
It might be a good idea to use qpdfview instead of Lucide. Lucide is no longer being maintained.