[vox-tech] Gentoo printer font problem

[Jonathan Stickel]

Bruce Wolk wrote:
> 
> 
> Jonathan Stickel said the following on 05/24/04 09:17:
>>
>> Hmm... looking up your printer on linuxprinting.org 
>> (http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-LaserJet_1300), 
>> I see this note:
>>
>> "User Notes
>> Printer works as designed.
>> The foomatic ppd file does not work, use the NT ppd file in CUPS.
>> It can be found on the cd that comes with the printer.
>> The file is called "hp1300nt.ppd" and there should be multiple ones for
>> each translation. Works perfectly, just copy it to /usr/share/cups/model/
>> to use it with CUPS."
>>
> I added the hp1300nt.ppd file.  Trying to install a printer with cups 
> gave me no new options.  In fact cups lists only a few hp drivers.  So I 
> am wondering whether something is wrong there. But I was able to add a 
> printer with the new driver using kde printing manager and activate it 
> through cups.  Kate prints even nicer now--no dithering on the 
> greyscale--but Kword prints poorly still and, even more surprisingly, 
> firefox won't print at all!  The printer light also flashes continuously 
> after a job.  So I am back to square one.
> 
> Would an unmerge of cups and foomatic followed by an emerge be worth a 
> try, or is that dangerous?
> 
> Bruce

Many more print drivers will show up in the cups web interface if you 
enable the ppds USE variable and re-emerge foomatic (and maybe cups too):

# USE="ppds" emerge foomatic cups
# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart

I don't know why this is not on by default; the generated drivers only 
take up 6.6 MB of space.  ppd files for all foomatic printers will be 
generated and put in /usr/share/ppd.  You should put your special NT ppd 
file in /usr/share/ppd/HP, if you have not already.  Hopefully it too 
will show up in the cups web interface, but I don't know for sure.

You might also try the hpijs driver.  This needs to be emerged separately:

# USE="ppds" emerge hpijs
# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart

The hpijs driver is a linux driver directly from HP, so you might have 
some luck with it.  I use it with my HP Laserjet 4.

I can't test printing from kword since I don't have it installed.  Also, 
I use standard Mozilla 1.6, not firefox.  In the print menu, I click on 
properties and type "kprinter" for the print command.  I just discovered 
the "xprint" USE variable for mozilla/firefox.  I haven't recompiled 
mozilla with it on, but supposedly it provides a better printing interface.

Hope this gets you further!

Jonathan

P.S.
You might want to check out the package "ufed" for managing USE 
variables and "porthole" (currently in testing) for a portage gui.