# gimp-print 4.3.18 epson drivers don't seem to work well

## dopey

Anyone try gimp-print 4.3.18?  It was just marked stable and after upgrading to it I can no longer print properly to my Epson Stylus Color 850 using gimp-print.  Also, I can't seem to build gimp-print-4.2.5 after building the new ghostscript that was marked stable also.

I can use the foomatic stc800ih.upp driver fine, but it's quality is nowhere near as good as gimp-print's..

Also, what's the deal with marking a development version of gimp-print stabl when there's a perfectly good stable version (4.2.5) available.

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## lanius

can you please provide more information about the error, cups log, e tc?

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## dopey

There are no errors.

Here's what happens.  The default resolution for the gimp-print driver is 720x360.  When using the default resolution and printing the test page it prints the test page, but it prints it incorrectly.  What happens is it'll print about 1/2cm which is also vertically squished.  Then it prints nothing for 1/2cm, then continues on again.  Basically doing this over and over.

If I drop down to the resolution I preferred (360 dpi) it just prints blank pages.  There's never an error anywhere and the cups log and everything looks absolutely normal.

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## dopey

http://www.moonteeth.com/~dopey/badprint.jpg is an example of the test page.

When I say 1/2cm I may be exaggerating as it looks smaller than that.

I was trying to rebuild ghostscript 7.05.6-r2 to see if it's a ghostscript problem (and if the problem still occured I was going to try to drop down to gimp-print 4.2.5 also to narrow down which component is broken), however, there are some dependencies I'm not aware of since it won't build properly.  I'll try to spend more time on them tonight after I get home from work to try to troubleshoot this some more.

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## digger

Why don't gimp-print create any PPDs by default?

Can someone give my SHORT instructions (eg. command line) for creating such a thingy with foomatic?

Maybe that's your problem dopey?

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## lanius

You should read the information printed after merging the package  :Wink: 

"The gimp-print ebuild no longer creates the ppds automatically, please use foomatic to do so or remerge gimp-print with the ppds use flag."

the foomatic method is described in the printing howto on gentoo.org.

mfg, Heinrich  :Smile: 

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## digger

Yes, I read that. Is there a good reason NOT building them? Space savings perhaps? Could someone enlighten me, please?

Another thing I read about in the docs for gimp-print:

You have to force the use of the newer PPDs or else you get corrupted printing. Maybe you could try to remove and add the printer. You probably thought of that already  :Embarassed: 

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## lanius

On the one hand it's pace saving, on the other it is unifying installation of printing drivers. Hpijs, Omni, Gimp-print, Foomatic, some installed ppds, some didn't, now everyone does if you have the ppds use flag set.

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## digger

I have a slight problem with the Printing-howto.

I don't have a /usr/share/foomatic/db/source/printer directory.

I feel stupid, what I'm doing wrong?  :Embarassed:   Did I miss some package? Maybe an update to the HOWTO pointing this out would be helpful...

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## digger

Stupid me, I forgot to intall the foomatic metapackage  :Smile: 

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## digger

Well, I got it working!  :Very Happy:  Almost.  :Smile: 

It doesn't really get the margins right (although a lot better than the standard CUPS driver). How do I change that since I couldn't find any info about it?

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## lanius

try localhost:631 in your browser, search for your printer and set page size to A4 from us letter

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## dopey

I used both the USE="ppds" method and foomatic-ppdfile command to generate the PPDs.  Both give essentially the same PPD file (which makes sense) and both result in the

same general problems printing.

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## dopey

gimp-print 4.2.5 and ghostscript 7.05.6-r3 and r2 work fine.  So it's not a ghostscript problem.  Must be a problem with gimp-print 4.3.18's ppd file.

I guess I'll play more and see if I can fix/find the problem.

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## Chin Yee

I am dual booting Gentoo Linux and Windows XP. I find that my Epson C80 prints several times faster on Windows XP than on Linux. I can print plaint test document at 4-5 ppm under XP using the normal setting but can only print less than 2 pages under linux using gimp-print-4.3.18. Changing the setting to draft mode only decrease the print quality with no improvement in printing speed.

I compared the ppd for gimp-print-4.3.18 to that of gimp-print-4.2.5. I found that with gimp-print-4.3.18 I can no long control if the printing is unidirectional or bidirectional. Under gimp-print-4.2.5, one can choose to use either unidirection or bidirectional printing for all resolutions. 

I tried to revert back to gimp-print-4.2.5 but the package failed to compile after I've upgraded the latest cups and foomatic.

Chin Yee

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## lanius

just checked in gimp-print-4.2.5-r2, this works with newer gs again.

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## dopey

So shoudn't gimp-print 4.3.18 be marked unstable for now?  I've emerged 4.2.5-r2 and will test it later, but an emerge -up is just going to try to upgrade it.

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## lanius

No, not for the moment, it was stable as gimp-print-cups before, it works fine for me and many others, so i will leave it stable.

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## Montag[SGU]

gimp-print 4.3.x is a development serie and it should be marked unstable.

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## shakti

i just want to comment that i have huge problems (not printing only throwing out pages) with gimp-print but cups works fine....so somethings wrong...

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## leej

 *digger wrote:*   

> Well, I got it working!  Almost. 
> 
> It doesn't really get the margins right (although a lot better than the standard CUPS driver). How do I change that since I couldn't find any info about it?

 

There is an alignmargin tool somewhere out there (Google?) which sorts this out.  I used it on my PPD file last year and it worked brilliantly (full page, edge to edge, photographic printouts became possible).

I have the same problem (my printouts are exactly as flawed as that in your URL) but I still can't fix it despite all the posts here.  I'd like to know which version of CUPS you are using because I wonder whether that will fix my problem (I already rolled gimp-print back and forth (4.25 <> 4.3.x) a million times).  I inherited this problem around the time that you posted this message (July) after an emerge world (I'll remember *never* to do that again with CUPS, gimp-print, etc. upgrades) and as I print mostly at work, I only seem to notice on the rare occasion that I need to print at home...and I can never figure out how to fix it.  Hence I'm still suffering this problem three months down the line.

Printing was easy and beautiful prior to July.  I've even rebuilt the system from scratch (due to new processor and hard disk) since then, but still the problem exists on the new system.   :Sad: 

Annoying to see that printer configuration is still a f***ing nightmare for some *common* and supposedly "fully working" hardware with Linux.

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