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An installation nightmare storyAn installation nightmare storyPosted Apr 18, 2003 0:16 UTC (Fri) by liamh (subscriber, #4872)Parent article: An installation nightmare story I've setup several printers in CUPS without problems (admittedly though, not an inkjet). However, one thing I've noticed about CUPS and linuxprinting is that you are steered towards generating your own ppd file. I don't understand why; all manufacturers have their own ppd file, and it's on that CD you think is not for Linux users, or it's on their web site. Look under Windows 2000 (Windows now uses PPDs), dig around, and you'll find it. Dump that in /usr/share/cups/model, run the cups configuration, and everything should work. I don't understand what you mean by "What's missing is a description of how to drive the printer" - isn't that what the ppd does? It is very nice to have all the interaction options that Windows and Mac users have in, e.g. selecting duplex, types of paper, etc. I like qtcups for doing this, but there are several GUIs. The options can also be selected from lpr on the command line.
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An installation nightmare story Posted Apr 18, 2003 6:16 UTC (Fri) by mcisely (subscriber, #2860) [Link] What you describe works fine for native postscript printers, all of which have PPD files. In that case I agree - I've been running an HP 6MP Postscript printer that way for a long time, and the PPD is all you need.But non-postscript printers don't come with PPD files, thus something else has to be "mashed together". If gimp-print directly supports the printer, then the CUPS gimp-print driver plus its enclosed printer-specific PPD file is enough. I have a C80 printer working this way, all nicely color-balanced even. If however gimp-print doesn't support the printer, you're left hacking your way through a foomatic configuration and THAT is not easy. I've got an HP Photosmart 7550 here that I've gotten to work with a foomatic-driven filter that pumps to the HPIJS driver, but I spent days getting that to work correctly. It works well in Linux now. GIMP works with it too, provided I supply GIMP with the foomatic PPD file (otherwise with the "generic" Postscript PPD all the printing comes out too greenish). Why can't GIMP's print plugin just fetch the PPD data itself from CUPS? The API is there in CUPS. But I digress... Just right now I've been working on getting that %##$&&@ HP 7550 to work from Win2K using the canned CUPS-Samba Win2K driver as the front end. I've already spent about 4 days struggling with it. The HP 6MP and the Epson C80 work perfectly this way, but the CUPS-Samba driver mysteriously fails on the foomatic-generated PPD for the HP Photosmart 7550. The cups.org web site is of no help - they specifically disclaim anything regarding the foomatic PPD files, even though the file passes CUPS' validation page. After 4 days I've given up on doing the Windows side the "clean" way, and now I'm trying to load HP's native driver to Windows, with raw printing through CUPS. But %%@@!!@@! now Explorer crashes when I try to bring up its property dialog. Yes, I definitely agree with the author of this article. Printing setup is still a pain is the *ss. And don't get me started about Windows network printing setup :-) -Mike
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