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OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 8:33 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304)In reply to: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released by job
Parent article: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
The problem with printers is the vast variety of consumer-grade stuff that's not PostScript.
Even the stuff that's reasonably compatible is problematic sometimes. e.g. I just got a Samsung ML-2250. I picked it *specifically* because it used PCL so would work under Linux, but it seems that it uses PCL6 or something that GS doesn't fully support yet (you can't get full 1200dpi resolution but are stuck at 600dpi). Samsung actually ship CUPS filters that allege to support this, but they're enormous binary-only lumps that are *excellent* at segfaulting. (pxlmono works fine, but you're restricted to 600dpi, again...)
And this is a printer with relatively *good* Linux support.
(I wonder if there are docs for the 1200dpi stuff so I can add support to GS: I haven't spent the time but that's my own damn fault.)
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OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 9:56 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
HP supports open source drivers for Linux for their cheaper crap.
The HPIJ and all that stuff. I had a all-in-one printer for a long time that worked pretty well in Linux. Scanner/printing combo.
For the most part I'd stay far away from anything that isn't either Epson or HP as far as cheap printers go.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:07 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Agreed; the only reason I went for this Samsung was because I spotted itcheap (and you can't really beat fifty quid for a mono laser! A lot of
consumer-grade inkjets cost more than that...)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 18:00 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
I just hate bl**dy Postscript!
I've had postscript printers that crashed, and once it started your only fix was to throw the document away and start again ...
I don't know why, but I cannot get an A4 pdf document to print cleanly on to an A4 sheet of paper - it either lines up the document edge with the printer PRINTABLE edge (so the document is offset slightly to the bottom right), or "shrinks the document to fit" so the A4 image fits inside the A4 printable margins and is not quite the size it's supposed to be ... etc etc.
Give me PCL or some other simple printer language where "what you send is what you get", not something completely different ...
Oh - and I think they've fixed it now (it was a very old SuSE) - but why when I told CUPS *NOT* to auto-discover printers, did it think doing a network scan was a good idea?!?! SuSE support got a right earful over that!
lpd may be basic, but it's simple, and it works.
Cheers,
Wol
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:09 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
lpd and LPRng also support filters that can be arbitrary programs ratherthan having to conform to a rather odd API.
On my todo list (not near the top) is implementing command wrappers for
the necessary parts of the CUPS filter API so that you can write filters
in the shell for CUPS too :)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 2, 2007 6:56 UTC (Mon) by MortFurd (guest, #9389) [Link]
And I LOVE bloody postscript. My experiences with printing seem absolutely opposite yours. I find that pdf files print more consistently using postscript, and psotscript is much easier to manipulate when something goes wrong.
We have a database system that generates mailing labels from an enormous database. The vendor provided templates only worked properly if you were using a particular brand and model printer. The program provides the labels as a pdf file. The vendor took over a year to fix the problem, in the mean time I've got users ripping out their (and my) hair over labels that print so wrong as to be unusable.
Solution:
Have them print to a virtual postscript printer. Use Ghostscript to resize and reposition the labels, then print to the users' real printer.
I was a manual setup for each user that needed to print labels, but that's better than no labels.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:40 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Your problem sounds more like Acroread and less like Postscript.
Acroread's default configuration is to scale a page, down to fit into margins, just as you describe. But at least it remembers when one changes that configuration. In addition, it defaults to Letter page format (and one can not change this default, at least I don't know how), the page format has to be changed at every 1st print of a program run; without that the page is positioned wrongly.
Postscript and CUPS does none of this scaling. If you use Acroread, look at your print configuration.
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 5, 2007 18:38 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]
Have you tried SpliX? It supports 1200x1200dpi on my ML2010. The website says it has not yet been tested on your printer, so I'm sure the authors would be interested in your feedback
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 5, 2007 19:31 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]
1200dpi on ML2010 with splix? Last I tried, it resulted in a horizontally stretched output, so that only half of a page was printed.
Anyway, thanks for the link, looks like I'm running an old beta version -- time to upgrade...
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 21, 2007 23:26 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I'd not heard of it. I'll give it a spin. Thanks!