Printing
From Arnout Engelen
Contents |
[edit] lpr
The cups lpr lets me print pdf documents with 'lpr <file>'. It'd be nice to add support for odt and doc files - for now 'oowriter -p file' also works fine :)
[edit] HP OfficeJet 5610 All-in-One
This printer is supported by HPLIP.
Some nitpicking:
- The HPLIP page suggests installing the package from that site, I think it should recommend installing the packaged version for your distribution (if available).
- One the printer, the 'Help menu' reports there's no computer connected.
- The on-printer menu beeps annoyingly
[edit] Printing
- When I wanted to install the printer in CUPS, it didn't show up in the lists. Turns out I also had to install the hpijs and hpijs-ppds packages. I think the hplip package should suggest/recommend those.
[edit] Scanning
Scanning works with xsane. Note that xsane defaults to 75dpi, while ridiculously high resolutions are supported.
There seems to be a slight problem with scanning with the Automatic Document Feeder: when scanning, for example, 2 pages, the scanner will first scan the flatbed, and then the ADF pages. xsane opens only the first 2 scans (i.e., the flatbed and the first ADF scan) in the viewer.
Scanning at 75dpi via the ADF gives ugly results. Higher resolutions or flatbed scanning seem fine.
scanimage, from the sane-utils package, is a command-line scanning tool. I wonder how to set the DPI to be used though.
[edit] sharing with saned
To share the scanner, I took saned from the sane-utils package. 'man saned' mentions I have to make it available with inetd.conf as:
sane-port stream tcp nowait saned.saned /usr/sbin/saned saned
2 small problems:
- I had to update the name 'sane' in my /etc/services to the newer 'sane-port'
- it seems inetutils-inetd does not support 'saned.saned' syntax, so I changed that to just 'saned'
[edit] xsane client for windows
I tried XSane for Windows, however it doesn't find my printer (and doesn't tell me why specifically).
[edit] 2-on-1 copying
It'd be nice to do stuff like 2-on-1 copying. haven't really looked into that yet.
[edit] "scan" button
Hitting 'scan' on the device gives a 'No Scan Options (Refer to device documentation)' message. It seems that this button was designed poorly: the PC must poll the printer very often to support it. As this introduces a performance hit to the PC and USB connection, HPLIP decided not to support this feature.
[edit] Installing on Windows
It appears the `driver' software on Windows is not a regular Windows driver, but some strange application that assumes the printer is either directly connected with USB, or directly attached to the network with its own ethernet, wireless or bluetooth connection. This means the printer cannot be easily made available via CUPS, as the official driver cannot be selected in the 'Add printer...' dialog. HP Support is friendly, but unable to help with the problem.
A workaround is to, instead of using the official Windows driver, use a generic CUPS Postscript driver for Windows (or the 'Generic' 'MS Publisher Image Setter', or an Adobe driver). This only printed in black-and-white for me, but setting 'Properties'->'Printing properties'->'advanced'->'document options'->'postscript options'->'optimize for' to 'portability' instead of 'speed' fixed that.
This mailinglist post by Sam Stern contains some other helpful settings to use.
See also:
- http://blogs.the-haleys.org/david.php?itemid=111
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.printing.hplip.user/3785
[edit] Problems
After turning the printer off and on, it couldn't be recognized as printer or scanner anymore:
hpiod: invalid Device::DeviceID: No such device hp:/usb/Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2 io/hpiod/device.cpp 771
However, hp-setup still detected the device. I decided to /etc/init.d/hplip restart, but then:
Jul 8 09:57:11 mintzer hpiod: 1.6.10 accepting connections at 2208... Jul 8 09:57:34 mintzer Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2: invalid message: : prnt/hpijs/hplip_api.c 183 Jul 8 09:57:34 mintzer Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2: INFO: open device failed; will retry in 30 seconds...
And then, repeatedly:
Jul 8 09:58:04 mintzer Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2: unable to send DeviceOpen: Broken pipe: prnt/hpijs/hplip_api.c 420 Jul 8 09:58:04 mintzer Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2: unable to send Event hp:/usb/Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2 254 5012: Broken pipe Jul 8 09:58:04 mintzer Officejet_5600_series?serial=CN6CRDG6SD04B2: INFO: open device failed; will retry in 30 seconds...
'/etc/init.d/cupsys restart' seems to have fixed things.
