The Gutenprint FAQ

## Gutenprint FAQ

1. ### Is it only for Gimp?

   No, it can be used for many printing needs. Gimp-print started out as a driver for The Gimp, the well known image manipulation program. Early in development versions for Ghostscript and later CUPS were added. The emphasis is still on quality color printing, though performance gets a lot of attention these days.

2. ### I cannot install it, it complains about missing Gimp files

   - If you have the Gimp installed on your system, you probably have the user package, but not the development package, installed. You will need to install the latter from your installation media; it's usually named gimp-devel.

   - If you do have the Gimp installed, and you've installed the gimp-devel package, you may also need to install the gtk-devel and glib-devel packages.

   - If you've installed the Gimp from source, you may need to run `ldconfig` as root. The installation procedure for the Gimp doesn't run ldconfig, which is needed on many systems to tell the system about the shared libraries that are installed. If you don't understand this, don't worry; just do it. If you're nervous about doing that, reboot.

   - If you don't have the Gimp installed on your system, and just want to compile Gutenprint for CUPS (for example), you need to pass `configure` the option `--with-gimp=no`, so it won't try to look for the Gimp and fail.

3. ### What is the difference between B/W, Line art, solid color and Photo mode (or ImageType in Ghostscript)?

   Photo mode does a lot of work to make colors as similar to screen presentation as possible. This takes time. Line art is faster, but colors may be off. Solid Colors is somewhere in between. B/W mode does not use color ink when printing, and is much faster.

4. ### I selected my printer and it doesn't work at all!

   Please check your printing system (lpd, CUPS, LPRng, etc.) configuration. You may also have a problem with your parallel port or USB connection, so take a look at `/var/log/messages` (or wherever your system logs are kept).

5. ### I selected my printer and it simply feeds paper without printing

   Many Epson printers (in particular) do this if they encounter an error in the command stream. This usually indicates a bug in Gutenprint; please report it to gimp-print-devel@sourceforge.net or via the bug tracking system at http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net. Make sure you report the printer you have and all of the settings that you used. But first, triple check that you're using the right printer model!

6. ### I selected my printer, and it prints the image badly distorted, or at completely the wrong place on the page

   This usually indicates a bug in the package. Please report it as described above. Also as described above, make sure you've set the right printer.

7. ### I selected the right printer and nonsense, or only part of the page, gets printed

   Printers for which support just has been added may not have been tested, as the developers do not have access to the printer. It is worth trying different settings. For example, change the resolution to a mainstream value as used on that printer. Also photo mode is better tested than the optimized versions. When you find out what works and what doesn't, file a bug report.

   One common cause of this is not using "raw" mode when printing from the Gimp plugin. Depending upon your printing system, you will need to use either `-l` (traditional BSD lpd), `-oraw` (CUPS lpr), or `-d` (most versions of System V lp, including CUPS). Otherwise the printing system attempts to interpret the output as something else, and tries to apply a filter to it to convert it to something else (usually PostScript).

   Another less common cause of this (it usually causes other symptoms, like printing only part of a page) is lack of space somewhere. This is most commonly an issue when using the Gimp Print plugin. The plugin creates a huge temporary file that gets sent to the printing system. The size of the file varies; it's proportional to the page size and the resolution setting chosen. Full-page, high resolution photographs can result in 100 MB of output. The system may need to have 2 or 3 copies of this file for short periods of time. If your /tmp, /var, or wherever your spooler keeps its temporary files is too small, you'll have problems.

   Finally, problems with your parallel or USB port may be the cause of problems here. Certain Epson printers in particular are known to be very sensitive to the quality of connecting cables, and may have trouble with long or low quality cables, or USB hubs. If nothing else works, and you're certain you've tried everything else, try a better cable or a direct USB connection.

8. ### What's up with the HP Deskjet 1200?

   HP had sold two printers with the 1200 model designation. The old version is 300 DPI and has a heating element to dry the ink. It was manufactured around 1990. The new version is of 2000 vintage and has higher resolution. The one supported by this package is the new one???

9. ### I selected the right printer and the quality is lousy

   Try selecting a different resolution or quality setting. Especially lower resolutions have a problem putting enough ink on paper. Also, use Photo mode. If you find settings that do not work at all (you get garbage or no output, but other settings work), report these as bugs. High resolutions should produce a similar (but smoother) result than medium resolutions. Resolutions under a certain printer dependent figure are seen as draft-only - for example lower than 360 DPI on Epsons with standard paper or lower than 300 DPI on HP.

   Also make sure that you have the right kind of paper selected. Selecting plain paper when you're printing on high quality photo paper is certain to result in a light, grainy image. Selecting photo paper when you're printing on plain paper will result in a dark, muddy image that bleeds through the paper. There are differences between different kinds of paper; you may need to tweak the density and color settings slightly.

   In addition, certain printers don't work well on certain kinds of paper. Epson printers work well on Epson papers, but don't work well on many third party papers (particularly the high quality photo papers made by other vendors). This isn't a conspiracy to lock you into their paper, it's because they've formulated the paper and ink to work well together.

   If you use Ghostscript, make sure the Ghostscript resolution is not set higher than the driver resolution. If it is higher, the driver has to throw away part of the pixels, leading to uneven strokes in text and slanted lines with interruptions.

10. ### How do I start setting options for Ghostscript?

    Please see src/ghost/README for more information.

11. ### `escputil -i` or `escputil -d` fails as follows:

        % escputil -r /dev/lp0 -i

        [ ... license info omitted ... ]

        Cannot read from /dev/lp0: Invalid argument

    You need to rebuild your kernel with CONFIG_PRINTER_READBACK enabled.

12. ### I tried to test my Epson printer by 'cat .cshrc > /dev/lp0' and nothing prints!!!???

    The classic test of printer connectivity -- sending an ASCII file to it -- doesn't work on many Epson printers out of the box (or after printing from Windows or Macintosh). Epson printers from the Stylus Color 740 and newer use a special "packet mode" in which they do not recognize standard commands or ASCII text. They must be sent a special sequence that takes them out of packet mode. The command

        escputil -u -s -r /dev/lp0

    will take the printer out of packet mode and enable you to print to it. Of course, as soon as you've read back status from the printer, you know it's working (although if you're unable to read status out of the printer, you might have a different problem; see above).

    Printing to your printer from Gutenprint, whether you use the Print plugin, the CUPS driver, or the Ghostscript driver, will also take the printer out of packet mode. But then again, if you successfully print to your printer, you know it's working, so why worry? If you're trying to test your spooler, though, the escputil trick above will do it. Just make sure that /dev/lp0 is the right device; if it isn't, substitute whatever is.

    Note: this does not apply to printers prior to the 740 (such as the Stylus Photo EX, Stylus Color 850, or anything even older). Those printers are always capable of printing ASCII text, and don't have packet mode. You can read status from them, but you must leave off the '-u' option.

13. ### My USB-connected Epson Stylus printer won't work with {Free,Net,Open}BSD!

    By default, the BSD device driver for the USB printer device (usually ulpt0) does a prime, or USB bus reset, when the device is opened. This causes the printer to reset itself (one can hear the print head moving back and forth when this happens) and lose sync. After this the printer won't go into graphics mode and instead spews characters all over you expensive photo paper. This has been observed on the Stylus Photo 870; it likely exists with other USB-connected Epson Stylus printers.

    The fix is to use the "unlpt0" device instead of "ulpt0". The driver doesn't perform the USB prime when unlpt is opened. If this device doesn't exist on your system you can create it with

        mknod unlpt0 c 113 64 root wheel

    in the /dev directory.

14. ### I try to print with StarOffice and it doesn't print correctly!

    If you use CUPS, and your prints from StarOffice come out incorrectly (particularly at low resolution), try the following. This assumes a network installation of StarOffice 5.2.

    1. Ensure that `root` does not have a .Xpdefaults file (if it does, the procedure below will edit root's version rather than the system-wide version in `.../office52/share/xp3/Xpdefaults`).

    2. As root, start `.../office52/program/spadmin`. This is the StarOffice printer administration program.

    3. Click on Install New Driver. For the Driver directory, select your CUPS PPD directory. This is usually `/etc/cups/ppd`. This should list the names of all of the drivers you have installed.

    4. If there are no drivers visible, you may need to give the .ppd files names ending in .PS. The following script will accomplish this:

           # cd /etc/cups/ppd
           # for f in * ; do
           > ln -s $f `echo $f | sed 's/ppd$/PS/'`
           > done

       Following this, restart `spadmin` and click on Install New Driver. When you select your CUPS PPD directory, you will find the necessary drivers listed.

    5. Select the drivers you want StarOffice to know about and click OK.

    6. If you have been using the generic Postscript printer, remove all of your old queues.

    7. Select the appropriate new driver(s) and click Add New Printer.

    8. Select the appropriate printer queue and click Connect to connect it to the printer queue of your choice.

    You can now set up appropriate options for this printer. Note that you can create multiple queues with different settings, for example one for draft mode and one for high quality.

15. ### I'm printing through Samba, and my printer prints garbage!

    There are a number of Samba configuration issues that cause problems; a common problem is translation from UNIX newlines (\n) to Windows newlines (\r\n). It's important to ensure that sending raw data, with no translation, to the printer.