Re: Printer hassle

[George Langford <george@georgesbasement.com>]

The plot thickens ...

I started with:
> > I attempted fixing it by deleting the printer and reinstalling it; I
> > chose a different driver: Epson Stylus Photo 870 Foomatic/Stp870p.upp.

Roger Leigh wrote:

> This appears to be a Ghostscript UniPrint driver.  I wouldn't
> recommend this one.
>
> Install cupsys-driver-gimpprint (stable) or cupsys-driver-gutenprint
> (testing/unstable).  This will support your printer correctly.
>
> Go to http://locahost:631, and you can add a new printer, and choose
> your model from the list.

Tried that; ended up with:
          EPSON Stylus Photo 870 - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.7
That seemed to work, generating a nice preview of my homepage:
http://www.georgesbasement.com/ but when I tried printing that, it went
through all the motions but nothing ended up in the print queue. That
is a typical sign of trouble in my recent experience.  However, this
driver does let me print a PDF file successfully even when HTML files
go into the bit bucket instead of getting spooled.

Here's the routine:
...
          Name: EPSON%20Stylus%20Photo%20870
          Location: /dev/usb [/dev/usb/lp0 instead ?]
          Description: Epson Stylus Photo 870
...
          Device: USB Printer #1 (Epson Stylus Photo 870)

Model/Driver for EPSON%20Stylus%20Photo%20870
          EPSON Stylus Photo 870 - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.7

That's the only choice that appears when I pick "Device: USB
Printer #1 (Epson Stylus Photo 870)"

When instead I pick "MTINK directory (Epson Stylus directory)" it
offers the same driver (EPSON Stylus Photo 870 - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.7).
All other MTINK choices produce the same list of drivers.  It comes down
to a choice between "Epson Stylus Photo 870 Foomatic/Stp870p.upp" and
"EPSON Stylus Photo 870 - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.7."

When I try:

sudo apt-get install cupsys-driver-gimpprint
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
cupsys-driver-gimpprint is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

So I already have cupsys-driver-gimpprint, but it's not working.

What about ipp (Internet Printing Protocol) ?

When I try that route, CUPS asks for a URL such as:

file:/path/to/filename.prn
    http://hostname:631/ipp/
    http://hostname:631/ipp/port1
    ipp://hostname/ipp/
    ipp://hostname/ipp/port1
    lpd://hostname/queue
    socket://hostname
    socket://hostname:9100

but I'm down to zero confidence as to the appropriate route.  However,
your suggested print driver seems to reduce the problem's magnitude. I
can now print PDF's; OpenOffice (SXW) files print OK, too.  But whether
I try HTML files with OpenOffice or from Firefox, they just disappear
into oblivion and no new jobs appear in CUPS.

> For a while I thought I'd just give up on this printer and connect it
> instead to a Windows PC ... but then I found out that Epson printers
> are just about the best ones to use with Linux.  So I'd have an even
> worse hassle with a new printer.

If you use the appropriate driver (Gutenprint/Gimp-Print), you will
get superb output. Regards, Roger

Progress !  Excellent output from the PDF viewer and OpenOffice SXW's
but not with HTML files, even though OK previews appear on screen.

Best regards,
George

George Langford
george@georgesbasement.com