system-config-printer
This page is about the printer administration tool system-config-printer, which first appeared in Fedora (as part of my work at Red Hat), and later Ubuntu and other operating systems.
The purpose of the tool is to configure a CUPS server (often the local machine) using the CUPS API. The tool is written in Python, using pygtk for the graphical parts and with some Python bindings (pycups) for the CUPS API.
It is largely the same as using the CUPS web interface for configuring printers, but has the advantage of being a native application rather than a web page. It appears in the Fedora menu under System ▸ Administration ▸ Printing.
As a result of using the CUPS API the tool is able to configure remote CUPS instances and is not limited to configuring CUPS on the local machine. The CUPS library providing the API uses HTTP and IPP to communicate with the CUPS server.
I work on this application as part of my job at Red Hat.
Download
Download tarball releases from:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/data/system-config-printer/
You will also require pycups from:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/software/pycups/
Source Code
The git repository is available at fedorahosted.org:
git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/git/system-config-printer.git
or browse using gitweb.
New releases are announced at freshmeat.
Translations
Language translations should be submitted through Fedora Transifex.
Mailing list
There is a public mailing list for discussion of the development of this project.
Reporting bugs
If you have found a bug in system-config-printer, please report it. If system-config-printer came with your operating system, report the bug to the operating system vendor:
- Packagers, or people who have installed system-config-printer from source themselves, should report the bug in the fedorahosted trac instance for system-config-printer. This is the “upstream” bug tracker.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora users should use Red Hat Bugzilla
- Ubuntu users should use launchpad
- Mandriva users should use Mandriva Bugzilla
Montse: what you are seeing is not a system-config-printer bug. Please take a look at this page to find out how to diagnose or report printing problems. Sounds like you need to report a problem using the Ubuntu launchpad web site.
I am wondering about the Property settings under Printer Options called “Color Model”. The setting was automatically set as RGB. I have ink in my printer from left to right, Black,Cyan,Magenta,Yellow.
Below the Color Model setting is “Printer Features Common” where “Ink Type” is set as CMYK.
Please excuse my ignorance, but, should one or both of these settings be KCMY; the same layout as the actual ink cartridges?
FYI The test page printed out fine with the default settings.
Great job BTW on this tool. I was quite impressed to see the latest UBUNTU LTS beta 1 automatically detect my Canon printer and go get the proper driver. Most times Windoze can’t do that.
Mark: I think the colour model determines how the printer driver receives raster data, whereas the ink type determines the way the driver specifies to the printer which colours to use.
I think the order of the colours in CMYK depends on how the printer expects to receive the data over the wire rather than the physical order they are in the printer (although one might expect them to correspond). Not completely sure.
[...] just released version 1.2.1 of system-config-printer. One of the changes is that it now uses the D-Bus API of the Fedora firewall tool to actually [...]
[...] those of you interested in participating in system-config-printer development, I invite you to join the new mailing [...]
[...] gutenprint does not report inklevels to cups (see email-correspondence with Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski, http://cyberelk.net/tim/software/sys…ge-7/#comments). Tim opened a bug on Red Hat Bugzila for this (see mailings cited above). For Epson printers, you [...]
Why on earth the need to throw away something that worked well (HAL)?
In Mandriva 2010.1 RC I cannot use properly my printer SAMSUNG ML-1640:
After few pages it gets jammed. I suspect that it is work of the great deed moving HAL to udev.
Beside that, the udev is crippled in Ubuntu Lucid too. I’ve been hoping that at least Mandriva won’t follow that bad example, but as a Hungarian phrase says: ” One monkey makes a hundred!”
The HAL solution did not work particularly well actually.
Does your printer require firmware to be downloaded every time it is powered on? I know there is an outstanding issue with that.
Why all of a sudden I no longer able to print only print to file. It says something about CUPS but when I following the instructions, it does not have the same items , such as properties, or expand network, it also say go to services after clicking printing, but that word never shows up. how do i get my printer to print whats on the screen?