[Printing-summit] Would like a spot on the agenda to present operability results.

[Till Kamppeter]

Fujinaka, Todd wrote:
> I have snapshots of five different distros from 9/2006-ish (Debian Etch,
> Ubuntu 6.06.1, Fedora Core 5, SUSE Linux Desktop 10, and Mandriva 2006)
> and five printers (HP 5610, Epson Stylus CX3810, Samsung ML2250, HP
> LJ1022, and Xerox 6120N.)

Great, I am looking forward for your report.

Not only Fedora 6 is shortly before release, as Uli told, but also 
Mandriva 2007 and Ubuntu Edgy 6.10. I have tested these two and they 
both vastly improved in printing.

Some features of the currently available release candidates/betas/snapshots:

Mandriva 2007 RC: LJ 1022 with 1200x600dpi, way faster and more 
reliable, Stylus CX3810 should scan out of the box and have better print 
quality, For Samsung ML-2250 you can try the alternative "Splix" driver 
(expert mode of printerdrake, please try whether it is better than 
pxlmono, so that I can choose the correct "recommended" driver), fax 
support for HP's MF devices. Integration of new CUPS 1.2 functionality 
in printerdrake. Very fast network printer auto-detection (SNMP broadcast).

Ubuntu Edgy Knot 3: Admin tasks in CUPS Web interface 
(http://localhost:631/) are finally working out-of-the-box (enter your 
user name and password when web interface is asking). Very high output 
quality on current Epson Stylus printers, Fax and many other 
improvements on HP's printers and MF devices, tons of CUPS bug fixes.

On Edgy do also the Debian morning gymnastics ("sudo apt-get update; 
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade", if asked for a password enter your user 
password) and then remove your print queues and test again. The LJ 1022 
should then get set up like under Mandriva: 1200x600dpi, way faster and 
more reliable. Many native PostScript printer's should be set up with 
manufacturer-supplied PPDs now.

I have tested the two mentioned distros with several HP multi-function 
devices, the LaserJet 1020 and 1022, some native PostScript LaserJets, 
the Color LaserJet 2600n. Some results:

- HP LaserJet 1020 (only tested on Mandriva) works out-of-the-box with 
Mandriva 2007. When plugging the printer for the first time printerdrake 
downloads the firmware automatically from the internet and then UDEV 
uploads the firmware into the printer whenever it is connected and/or 
turned on.

- HP LaserJet 1022: 1200x600dpi, faster and more reliable with foo2zjs 
instead of HPIJS driver, set up this way in Mandriva, change in the 
works in Ubuntu.

- Native PostScript printers: In Mandriva they were set up with 
manufacturer-supplied PPDs all the time, in Ubuntu the manufacturer PPDs 
are not installed by default. This is fixed very recently on Edgy (Do 
the Debian morning gymnastics).

- HP LaserJet 2600n (only tested on Mandriva) has a problem: The ESP GS 
8.15.2 which comes with the distros has a bug which messes up the color 
output of this printer. The author of the driver tells that the problem 
disappears with GPL GS 8.54, so please someone with this printer and 
with Ubuntu or Debian test with "gs-gpl".

NOTE: Here we see that we need to stop the ESP GhostScript fork and join 
with the head development of GhostScript. We need to talk about this 
issue on the Printing Summit.

- HP MF devices: Printing, scanning, and maintenance works very well on 
Mandriva and Ubuntu. Mandriva adds fully automatic setup with 
printerdrake. Faxing has some problems on Ubuntu (HPLIP 1.6.7) which are 
fixed on Mandriva (HPLIP 1.6.9).

    Till