[Foomatic] Using usb IDs for autodetection

Johannes Meixner jsmeix at suse.de
Thu Apr 15 06:54:59 PDT 2004


Hello,

On Apr 14 13:03 Joe Shaw wrote (shortened):
> On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 10:05 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> > YaST chooses the recommended Foomatic PPD file which is what several
> > experts think what hopefully normal users may regard as what you call
> > the "best" driver.
> 
> Yeah, that's exactly what I'd hope it would do.  My beef is that it
> shows more than one per printer.  As a user, how am I supposed to make
> the distinction between "HP FooJet 4000 foomatic/hpijs blah blah
> whatever" and "HP FooJet 4000 foomatic/Postscript bar quux baz"?  I
> shouldn't need to, that's my point.

Which Suse Linux version do you use - it seems before 9.0?

Since 9.0 YaST chooses the recommended Foomatic PPD file and you must
explicitely use [Edit] to get a list of the other available PPDs.

Unfortunaltey this caused new problems for some customers:
If the recommended Foomatic PPD file does not fit their needs
some customers don't find the [Edit] button and complain that
the printer cannot(!) be set up correctly.
This shows that automated setup makes the users more and more dumb
and if it was not set up as the user has in mind then there is of
course an error in the printing system.
For me automated setup is of course a step forward for the user
but the step is noticeable smaller than expected and the effort
for the developers is very much bigger than expected.


> > Please tell me what you think is the best printer driver for the
> > HP DeskJet 550C
> > HP DeskJet 990C
> > HP LaserJet 1200
> > HP LaserJet 4000
> > then I will tell you why you are wrong.
> 
> Well, I don't care.  It should just use whatever the "best" one is.

You don't care but "it" should make the "best" for you?
If so then shame on you!

If you care:

For DeskJet 550C the GimpPrint driver is recommended
but for black and white only printing other drivers don't
need so much resources and therefore result faster output.

For DeskJet 990C the HPIJS driver is recommended
but only the GimpPrint driver lets you adjust the amount of ink
and for fast black and white only printing other drivers are better.

For LaserJet 1200 the pxlmono driver is recommended
but this is a PostScript printer and using it as PostScript printer
may result better quality and to use all HP built-in features the
original HP PPD should be used but the printer fails in case of
PostScript level 3 (e.g. from Mozilla) and therefore the Foomatic
Postscript PPD should be used which makes Ghostscript prefiltering
possible (some customers don't find this feature and complain that
there is an error in CUPS because it doesn't print from Mozilla)
and for black and white only printing the ljet4 driver results the
fastest output.

For LaserJet 4000 the Foomatic Postscript PPD is recommended
but to use all HP built-in features the original HP PPD must be used
but (at least older models) may support only PostScript level 2 and
therefore fail in case of PostScript level 3 and therefore the
Foomatic Postscript PPD with Ghostscript prefiltering should
be used and for black and white only printing the ljet4 driver
may result the fastest output.

Regarding native PostScript versus Ghostscript prefiltering see
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/06/jsmeix_print-cups-filters.html

So what do you think is the "best" PPD for an automated setup?
* The PPD which prints in a maximum number of cases?
  - This would be the ljet4 driver for the above LaserJets.
    But it is limited to 600 dpi black and white only printing.
* The PPD which results the best quality and a maximum
  number of printer features?
  - This would be the manufacturer PPD for the above LaserJets.
    But it fails for PostScript level 3 (e.g. for Mozilla).

If and only if you own a several thousand dollar PostScript level 3
printer (with high speed CPU and tons of internal memory) then both
cases are no longer seperated: Use the manufacturer PPD and be happy.

Therefore Foomatic uses the word "recommended" and not "best"
because a "best" does not exist if there is more than one PPD available 
for a particular printer because each available PPD is best for a
particular purpose.

In contrast:
The recommended Foomatic PPD is the best recommendation which
is possible.
Therefore using the recommended Foomatic PPD for an automated setup
ist the best an automated setup can do.


In Suse Linux 9.1 we do some magic regarding PPDs from printer
manufacturers:

If the Foomatic Postscript PPD is recommended then it is a real
PostScript printer which is supposed to work well in PostScript mode
and if in this case a PPD from the manufacturer is available
then we use the manufacturer PPD.

Regarding the problems how to determine whethter there is a PPD
from the manufacturer for a particular model see my first mail in
this thread (the "series" problem):
http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/foomatic-devel/2004q2/001892.html

Note that we cannot use a manufacturer PPD in any case because
there are manufacturer PPDs for printers which can be enhanced
with a PostScript module but by default the printer doesn't support
PostScript (e.g. the HP LaserJet 4).

I don't know if model autodetection is different for the LaserJet 4
and LaserJet 4M - i.e. do the IEEE1284 strings change when a LaserJet 4
was enhanced with a PostScript module?


Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX AG, Maxfeldstrasse 5                 Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/




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