From: Digest To: "OS/2GenAu Digest" Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:22 EST-10EDT,10,1,0,7200,4,1,0,7200,3600 Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 1941 Reply-To: X-List-Unsubscribe: www.os2site.com/list/ ************************************************** Tuesday 13 April 2010 Number 1941 ************************************************** Subjects for today 1 Re: eCUPS : Ed Durrant 2 Re: eCUPS : Alan Duval 3 Re: eCUPS : Alan Duval **= Email 1 ==========================** Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:44:10 +1000 From: Ed Durrant Subject: Re: eCUPS Peter Moylan wrote: > david shearer wrote: > >> For what its worth I have a HP Officejet pro 5400dtn - network >> printer. It works flawlessly with eCups and hplib. there is a bit >> of fiddling around but eventually got it to work including with a >> print object. >> >> > My experience: Cups works once you have it set up, but the installation > is somewhat tricky, and you have to follow the "how to do it" > instructions really closely. There are some counter-intuitive > requirements, for example that the "gs" and "gutenprint" directories > must both be at the top level of the directory tree. (And must be on the > system partition? I've forgotten, but certainly they ended up on the C: > drive on my system, and normally I don't let anything install on the > system drive unless it is so crippled that it won't work on other > drives.) The tree must come off the root directory, but it doesn't need to be off the system boot drive (C: or whatever you have as boot drive (mine is J:)) My tree is off my F: applications drive. > What we really need a WarpIn script to automate those > less-than-obvious details. Any volunteers? I'm not volunteering myself, > because I still haven't understood Warpin well enough to be able to > design a Warpin script for my own software. > > There is already a warpin script to do the install - it does not work on my system, but apparently on many other peoples. Note this is using the standard eCUPS, not HPLIB or anything. > In my case, I ended up getting no use out of it, because it turned out > that the only printer I had that it worked for was an HP 880C Deskjet, > which already has perfectly good OS/2 drivers. I had really intended to > use it for a newer Brother printer, but from Paul's comments it seems > that Brother printers will never be supported. (I bought Brother in the > first place because I thought that they weren't locked in with > Microsoft, but I was wrong; apparently they're not going to release > enough information to allow non-Windows drivers to be developed.) > Some cheap Brother laser printers work with the standard IBM laserjet driver but I could never get my Brother Multi Function (MFC620CN) to work with eCS - OS2 - however that was before Pauls later compiles of eCUPS - by that time the Brother had broken down and was scrap. I currently use CUPS for my HP Officejet 6310 (using the 7110 driver) and my Canon Pixma ip4500 and both print fine. > Nevertheless, it was an interesting exercise proving to myself that Cups > did indeed work. > > Meanwhile, the HP printer is out of ink again, and I've finally decided > that I've spent far more on refilling ink cartridges than the printer is > worth. Time to get a laser printer. The really basic (but quite > adequate) black-and-white laser printers have become really cheap - > recently Dick Smith was selling quite a good one for less than $100. > Brother HL-2040 - got down to A$79 at several places a couple of years back - USB and Parrallel connection B&W laser printer, works with the os/2 laserjet driver set to HL-1240, no wireless (or wired) network on this model but there are some more modern varients that do have - but beware the change of internals meaning the driver is incompatible again. What I have done with my Canon (which is also not a network printer) is to connect it via its USB port to a Linksys WPS54G which is a wired and wireless print server. > I'm leaning myself towards the idea of a laser printer with a wireless > network interface - to the best of my knowledge these all work with > OS/2, although I've never put it to the test Unfortunately not ..... > - so that my Windows laptop > will also finally be able to print without the annoying overhead of > having to transport the laptop over to where the Brother printer is. The > Brother printer can go back to being a scanner and photocopier (it used > to be a fax machine as well, but a lightning strike took care of that), > and as a printer for the very rare cases where colour printing is desirable. > > I have never really understood why a network printer requires drivers on > every machine that wants to use the printer. In my mind it should be > sufficient to have a "generic network printer" driver on all machines, > plus a manufacturer-specific driver _only_ on the machine that the > printer is directly connected to. The fact that we can't do this says to > me that someone really screwed up the design of OS support for printers. > For Windows this is possible through a commercial product called Thinprint, it's used a lot when you want to support remote locations in a virtualised environment. > But I'll give full credit to the Postscript designers; they came closest > to implementing this ideal. > > But even with Postscript drivers, there's Postscript and Postscript "tweaked" for specific printers. -- Cheers/2 Ed Please checkout my podcasts at: http://eComStationAustralia.podbean dot com or via iTunes To subscribe - click this: http://eComStationAustralia.podbean dot com/feed -------------------------------------------------- http://www./melbpc/ - The Melbourne OS/2 SIG === **= Email 2 ==========================** Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:49:45 +1100 From: Alan Duval Subject: Re: eCUPS Paul Smedley wrote: > Hi Alan, > > On 12/04/10 16:44, Alan Duval wrote: >> paul at smedley dot id dot au wrote: >>> Hi Alan, >>> >>> Quoting "Alan Duval" : >>>> I downloaded your port of hplip and unzipped it to C: where cups is. >>>> I find that the drivers are in C:\cups\share\ppd\HP and the driver >>>> "hp_officejet_pro_K5300.ppd.gz" is there but it doesn't seem to show >>>> when I rerun the 'add printer' part in http://localhost:631. >>> I think this path is wrong.... At work right now, but from memory it >>> should be in: >>> \cups\share\cups\model\hp\*.ppd.gz >> >> I copied the HP folder to the path you suggested and the driver now >> shows in the list of printers displayed in the localhost:631 screen. >> Hence I deleted the previous printer and added a printer with the HP >> driver but test page doesn't print. Error line >> "\cups\lib\cups\filter\hpcups.exe failed" is displayed in the >> localhost:631 screen. I didn't change anything in eCS so don't know >> whether I should have deleted the printer in eCs also. > > Try printing a real document - the test print probably failed due to > missing resolution option - long story - related to the missing > resolution/print quality options in the hplip ppd files that I > mentioned earlier. Couldn't print a real document with the command C:\cups\bin\lpr -P HP \cups\readme.txt HP is the name I gave my printer when installed from localhost:631. After installing printer from localhost:631 the printers window shows: *Description:* HP Officejet Pro 5300 *Location:* Home office *Printer Driver:* HP Officejet Pro k5300, hpcups 3.9.12.29 *Printer State:* idle, accepting jobs, published. *Device URI:* usb://HP/Officejet%20Pro%20K5300?serial=MY84G6830J I cannot find the driver in C:\cups in any directory whereas the gutenprint.5.2.exe driver from previous installation is in c:\cups\lib\cups\driver\ All the hp*.ppd.gz files are in C:\cups\share\cups\model\ as copied previously and this resulted in K5300 being recognized in localhost:631 but these hp*.ppd.gz files are not drivers. I'm feeling really frustrated. Regards, Alan -------------------------------------------------- http://www./melbpc/ - The Melbourne OS/2 SIG === **= Email 3 ==========================** Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:19:26 +1100 From: Alan Duval Subject: Re: eCUPS david shearer wrote: > Paul Smedley wrote: >> Hi Alan, >> >> On 12/04/10 16:44, Alan Duval wrote: >>> paul at smedley dot id dot au wrote: >>>> Hi Alan, >>>> >>>> Quoting "Alan Duval" : >>>>> I downloaded your port of hplip and unzipped it to C: where cups is. >>>>> I find that the drivers are in C:\cups\share\ppd\HP and the driver >>>>> "hp_officejet_pro_K5300.ppd.gz" is there but it doesn't seem to show >>>>> when I rerun the 'add printer' part in http://localhost:631. >>>> I think this path is wrong.... At work right now, but from memory it >>>> should be in: >>>> \cups\share\cups\model\hp\*.ppd.gz >>> >>> I copied the HP folder to the path you suggested and the driver now >>> shows in the list of printers displayed in the localhost:631 screen. >>> Hence I deleted the previous printer and added a printer with the HP >>> driver but test page doesn't print. Error line >>> "\cups\lib\cups\filter\hpcups.exe failed" is displayed in the >>> localhost:631 screen. I didn't change anything in eCS so don't know >>> whether I should have deleted the printer in eCs also. >> >> Try printing a real document - the test print probably failed due to >> missing resolution option - long story - related to the missing >> resolution/print quality options in the hplip ppd files that I >> mentioned earlier. >> David, did you use the eCUPS003.wpi file to install eCUPS and the hplip.zip to install the HP printers? This is what I have used and can't find the driver for my HP Officejet Pro K5300 printer in the cups directory. Alan -------------------------------------------------- http://www./melbpc/ - The Melbourne OS/2 SIG ===