[vox-tech] Gentoo printer font problem

[Bruce Wolk]

Jonathan Stickel said the following on 05/25/04 09:20:
> 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.

I haven't emerged foomatic again yet, but I did change the print command 
in firefox to "kdeprinter" and tried the hp1300nt.ppd driver again. 
This time I actually got a chance to select the printer and it actually 
sent the job to the printer instead of nowhere, but it printed a page 
with an error message and instructions on using ghostscript.  I have 
never seen anything like this!  It starts out as follows:

The Postscript interpreter in your printer is 2014.116
This printout requires at least version 2015 or greater.

It then suggests I change the print command to a complicated gs command 
that I won't reproduce here.  Now this printer is only one year old and 
never had any problems printing from any program in Redhat 9, so I have 
some doubt that I really need ghostscript.