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Re: [hfdb] Printer data/ "driver" formats
From: |
Till Kamppeter |
Subject: |
Re: [hfdb] Printer data/ "driver" formats |
Date: |
Tue, 27 Jul 2004 04:19:07 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 |
Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Till, can you please give us non-printer tech-heads a run down on the
printer databases/ drivers out there.
The principal database currently is linuxprinting.org. Formerly there
was RHS Print Filters from Red Hat, SuSE had also its own thing. All
these disappeared as the distros switched to Foomatic from
linuxprinting.org. There is still APS Filter as a project which is
alive, but I do not know anyone using it. It most probably contains much
less printer info than linuxprinting.org. IFHP of LPRng also contains
printer info, but AFAIK only about PCL/PJL laser printers. But Patrick
Powell, author of LPRng, is working a lot on Foomatic currently, so the
IFHP info will make it into Foomatic sooner or later. Also PPD files
which come with PostScript printers contain data, and very important
data, as they describe the complete option sets of the PostScript
printers to which they belong. Some manufacturers released their PPDs as
free software. They are downloadable on
http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/PPD/
Foomatic/linuxprinting.org is the most important printer compatibility
database for free software.
Drivers (for converting data to the printer's language) come from
several different projects: HPIJS (from HP), Gimp-Print, GhostScript,
Epson-Kowa, but also from individuals who want to get the "damned thing
to work", as for example students who reverse-engineered the protocols
of their Lexmark inkjets to let their university work to get printed.
Links to all lmown free printer drivers are in the driver entries on
linuxprinting.org.
Low-level communication drivers for printers are usually in the kernel,
the appropriate modules for parallel and USB printers. Only a few
printers need/perform better with something special. Here we have HPOJ
(for HP's multi-function devices, for simultaneous printing and
scanning, scanning at all), MTink (to print and check ink levels at the
same time on Epson inkjets), but also drivers with low level
communication as the drivers for the Samsung ML-85G or the Canon LBP-660
to which you find links on linuxprinting.org.
I've heard of linuxprinting.org (obviously), the foomatic drivers,
various driver projects (like lprng, cups, lpd), and the whole thing has
never seemed remotely approachable from an end-user point of view. Every
time I do (Debian) "apt-cache search printer|grep -i print", there are
so many things to choose from, that the task of researching even enough
to understand it all has lead me to continue with what I was doing
previously :(
It's a lot of stff together:
Driver
low-level
kernel, HPOJ, ...
printer language
HPIJS, Gimp-Print
Spooler/printing system
CUPS, LPRng, PPR, PDQ, ...
PostScript/PDF renderer
GhostScript
Integration of the driver in the spooler/printing system
Foomatic
Printer hardware compatibility database
Foomatic
In particular, given Joe Shaw's recent email re: foomatic, a comparison
between foomatic and linuxprinting db.
More about how to use Foomatic:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/lpd-doc.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/ppr-doc.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/pdq-doc.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/ppd-doc.html
Instructions to set up print queues
http://www.linuxprinting.org/USAGE
USAGE file of the foomatic-db-engine package
http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic-filters/USAGE
USAGE file of the foomatic-filters package
More about how Foomatic works
http://www.linuxprinting.org/README
README file of the foomatic-db-engine package
http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic-filters/README
README file of the foomatic-filters package
Till