Re: printing very large sheets
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 12:55:16PM -0400, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
>
> As far as I can tell the printer is "stuck" thinking that an old page size
> I tried to create is the default page size for all pages. I can't figure
> out where this is set though.
>
> When I open the file in gs, it's displaying, but only in the bottom 1/10th
> of the display of the first page. Somewhere the extra long page that I was
> trying to get working has stuck.
So, as it looks, there's some problem in the PS code (though we can't yet
tell whether that's the only problem there is...).
What exactly are you seeing? Most of the content simply being cut off?
Or some miniature scaled down version of all the content you'd expect
to be printed? Is it displayed in the expected orientation? (if not,
you might try swapping the 864 / 3168 on the gs commandline)
It's a little hard to tell what might be wrong with the file, without
actually being able to look at it -- PostScript is a rather versatile
programming language... so, in theory (and apparently in practice, too :),
lots of things can go wrong (e.g. when postprocessing it, and someone
hasn't been following the recommended structuring guidelines...).
If you like, you can send me an example file, and I'll see what I can
do... (unless the content is so confidential that you don't want to
hand it over, of course :)
>
> > gs -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=864 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=3168 -dFIXEDMEDIA yourfile.ps
>
> ESP Ghostscript 7.07 (2003-07-12)
> Copyright 2003 artofcode LLC and Easy Software Products, all rights reserved.
> (...)
everything looks allright here...
> GS>Error: /undefined in q
(we can ignore that... it's just 'cos you're not supposed to type 'q'
there -- use Ctrl-C instead)
>
> And this is the extended error message from /var/log/cups/error_log:
>
> (...)
> D [04/Apr/2005:12:46:14 -0400] [Job 139] renderer command: gs -q -dBATCH -dPARANOIDSAFER -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=ijs -sIjsServer=hpijs -sDeviceManufacturer="HEWLETT-PACKARD" -sDeviceModel="deskjet 5550" -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=0 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=0 -dDuplex=false -r300 -sIjsParams=Quality:Quality=0,Quality:ColorMode=2,Quality:MediaType=0,Quality:PenSet=2 -dIjsUseOutputFD -sOutputFile=- -
>
> **************** note************
> deskjet 5550 is for my *other* ink jet printer. It should be using 9600 as
> the ppd. But I don't understand where it's getting that information from.
> ********* end note***************
yes, that "deskjet 5550" is definitely nonsense... as well as a few
other things. But we'll defer that for the moment, as at least some
of the errors might have to do with incorrect input.
Maybe you could try to print some simple test page first.
I've put together some minimal - but correct - PS code to print such a
test page. More precisely, it should print the word "Testpage" in large
letters across the entire page, with pagesize being set to your special
custom size (The letters will print outlined, to save ink while testing.)
The code deliberately does not _set_ the page size, it simply _needs_ a
certain area to be drawn correctly. IOW, you can (and have to) set the
page size independently with CUPS.
If you could get that to print with CUPS, we'd at least know that the
printing tool chain is working as intended. (You should of course also
be able to view it on screen with the gs command you've already used.)
If it doesn't print, the next step would be to tweak foomatic's gs
commandline as required. Well, if you'd like to invest some more time
into this issue...
To avoid having to fiddle with CUPS/foomatic itself while testing, you
could save the PCL output the gs driver generates to some file, and
then send that via CUPS' raw mode directly to the printer, without any
further filtering.
Almut
------------ the testpage code:
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Pages: 1
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 864 3168
%%EndComments
%%BeginProlog
%%EndProlog
%%BeginSetup
/width 864 def
/height 3168 def
/text (Testpage) def
%%EndSetup
%%BeginPageSetup
-90 rotate
height neg 0 translate
%%EndPageSetup
%%Page: -1- 1
/Times-Italic findfont 1000 scalefont setfont
0 0 moveto text dup false charpath
pathbbox 4 copy pop pop
/y0 exch def /x0 exch def
3 -1 roll sub 3 1 roll sub neg
height exch div exch width exch div
newpath scale
x0 neg y0 neg moveto false charpath
2 setlinewidth stroke
showpage
%%Trailer
%%EOF
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