Comments on: system-config-printer

By: Henri

Henri — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:53:35 +0000

At Moe Lemieux,

Just to let you know, i have precisely the same problem.
Test page is printed very small in the upper-left corner.
I have just connected the Canon BJC-1000 and let Ubuntu 9.10 find it. No settings changed.

Since i already have the problem, now I have played around with a lot of settings. No effect however. Still very small print.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:23:10 +0000

Jack: really pleased you are finding it useful!

By: tim

tim — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:12:14 +0000

Bronte: sorry, I’m not sure. Please take a look at http://openprinting.org/ to see what is known about your printer model.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:00:58 +0000

neil: sorry, I don’t know how to help you with that. There are several devices listed on the http://openprinting.org/ web site that might match yours, but the P3150 is listed as “paperweight” meaning there is no driver available.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:53:35 +0000

Tim,
this is a great tool! Using it here at a hospital on a dedicated printserver system — managing over 600 printers. Most of them are RAW printers, but several do use standard drivers. Most of the admins use the CUPS interface, but for the lesser advanced or for those who and to change a few little things, this is perfect.

thanks for taking the time to build this!

By: Bronte

Bronte — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:41:17 +0000

Using Ubuntu 9.10, I am attempting to install the drivers for a trusty Canon iP1800. The Canon is attached locally through a Belkin USB Hub. In checking your drivers list, I was unable to find the Canon iP1800, so downloaded the driver for Canon iP200. Though it recognizes the printer, I have been unsuccessful in printing a test page. All indicators point to this page being printed, but apparently not here. Is there any possibility that it has been diverted, or am I just running the wrong driver? Can I get the driver from Canon and import it? What do you suggest? Thanks.

By: neil kilburn

neil kilburn — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:06:26 +0000

I hooked a lexmark 3150 to the umuntu , hit new devices and it reconized the
printer and made it the default printer but no prints.

By: Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski

Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:47:27 +0000

Thanks, Tim.

I’m glad to know someone is already on top of the question.

As you can probably tell, I’m new to the universe of Ubuntu, hence unfamiliar with the gutenprint utility.

My Synaptic Package Manager says that I already have cups-driver-gutenprint and libgutenprint2 installed. My terminal window says “escputil: Command not found.”

In beginners’ terms, what stitch have I missed, and what do I need to do?

Errr… Hold on a moment…

I just checked my Synaptic Package Manager for escputil; it’s not installed, so I loaded it. Its “Help” offers an example of the relevant command-line, right down to identifying the raw-device name to use…

When I run as myself, it has insufficient permission, but when I run as root, bingo! there it is!

Okay, I see all the pieces really _are_ in place and it’s just a matter of when that bug will be picked up.

Thanks!
JPW

P.S.: Wierd… I just tried it again and got no display. The -e option says:

Warning! Printer (unknown printer) is not known; information may be incomplete or incorrect

Now I am freshly baffled…

P.P.S. I just restarted my computer. This letter, still in progress, was saved and restored by Firefox (FireFox IS GOOD!)
This time, escputil gave valid results after each try; I guess it was just a matter of the system catching up with the update. Furthermore, when I set the “SUID” bit in escputil’s permissions, it proceeded to work from the non-root account as well!

Live and learn…

By: tim

tim — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:46:19 +0000

Jan-Pawel: you’ll probably find that once gutenprint grows ink-level reporting support a great many more printers will have their ink-levels reported. This particular printer is drivable by gutenprint, so probably the ‘escputil’ program can already read its ink-levels if you run it by hand (probably with the ‘-u’ option).

What is really needed is for the gutenprint CUPS driver to report ink-levels to CUPS when asked to. This bug report is tracking that:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=238882

By: Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski

Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:44:28 +0000

Tim,

I have an Epson Stylus CX3810. I know this model is capable of transmitting its ink level because it used to do so when I had it connected to a Windows box. Yet, when I call the “Ink/Toner Levels” function of the printer configuration program, it says: “…levels are not reported for this printer”

The INKBLOT utility also does not report ink levels for this printer, and I found that the author of the libinklevel libraries does not know the data format for the ink-level transmission of this printer.

May I presume that both programs rely on the libinklevel libraries? If so, I’d like to suggest adding an option to the printer configuration program that would allow the user to capture the raw data of the ink-level transmission of the connected printer, which could then be examined so that the ink-level transmission data format could be deduced and support for the printer addded to the libinklevel libraries (assuming the manufacturer isn’t forthcoming with that specification…)

This might be the quickest way for the community to add support for the myriad printers that are out there…