[ale] Printing Situation

[Jeff Hubbs]

I look at it as being a necessary evil.  Printing under Linux, at least when
I first got into it heavily in 1998, looked like it was set up primarily for
line and dot matrix printers, with Postscript-based laser printers being a
relatively straightforward enhancement.  In a lot of ways, this isn't unlike
printing under VMS (or, naturally, lots of other Unices).  

The thing is that printer evolution took a decidedly non-Postscript parallel
path, including all things HP.  I think it is good that the Linux print
system(s) did not abandon Postscript and, in fact, I kind of hope that it
stays like that.  Having said that, though, I think that CUPS, LPRng, and
whatever else is going on out there needs to have a Darwinistic
settling-out, and soon.  I think it will happen.  Do you remember when
16-bit Wordperfect for Windows had its own thing going w.r.t. print drivers
and all that, and then all that stuff went away once Windows printing
improved with WinNT and then Win95?  

I'm finding that, throughout my career - going all the way back to my high
school DG Nova days - a lot of real-world computer work hinges on printing
and time and time again, I've found myself putting a lot of thought and
effort into getting a print operation to work "just so."  I've found that
printing under Linux is a lot rougher around the edges than it needs to be.

Just as an example, I have a Canon BJ-230 hooked up to a Mandrake 7.1
machine at home, and for some reason the printer starts every job with a
brief error light and it also resets itself to its default print quality on
every page.  CUPS is clearly mishandling the printer but, in this case at
least, not in a way that really screws up the output.  

I guess that the implied "social contract" calls for us to dive in and fix
what appears to be broken or at least materially help somehow; that's kind
of the point of all this Open Source business, I suppose.

- Jeff




-----Original Message-----
From: phrostie [mailto:pfrostie at yahoo.com]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 6:00 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] Printing Situation


i'm going thru cups hell myself.
i have an older HP plotter, the Cups people did not care enough to suport it

and asking for help with it on cups seems to fall on deaf ears.

things seemed to work a lot better before linux got moderized.

Of course, that's just my attitude towards a lot of things.

On Thursday 28 June 2001 12:30, you wrote:
> Go with CUPS.  It's a more modern and consequencially sensible approach
> IMHO, while lpr is antiquated.  Of course, that's just my attitude towards
> a lot of things, like qmail vs. sendmail, etc. etc.
>
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message
body.


___________________NOTICE____________________________ 

This electronic mail transmission contains confidential information intended
only for the person(s) named.  Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure
by any other person is strictly prohibited. If you received this
transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then
destroy the message.  Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this
message that do not relate to the official business of NIIT shall be
understood to be neither given nor endorsed by NIIT. When addressed to NIIT
clients, any information contained in this e-mail is subject to the terms
and conditions in the governing client contract.
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.