Re: lpd/samba printing with usb

[pierre-philipp braun <pbraun%nethence.com@localhost>]

Hi Olaf,

> I don't think so, at least for plain text test printing. Most printers
> that require funny drivers can print plain text using their own built-in
> font, even if it's ugly.

Yes it was some kind of typewriter font with my laserjet.  The samsung 
scx-4200 seems to accept neither direct text nor raw relay for clients' 
drivers (at least not the way I used to configure it in the printcap). 
So this is confusing to me.

> I need to use Splix for my printer (a Samsung ML-1640) and the usb
> connection is a bit funny there too. Sometines I need to unplug and
> replug the printer between two print jobs, or it won't print the second
> one.

So I finally installed CUPS and wip/splix.  I am using binary packages 
as much as possible (2013Q4) so I only had to compile splix for myself 
using wip.

poppler-0.24.5      PDF rendering library
poppler-utils-0.24.5 PDF utilities (from poppler)
cups-1.5.4nb8       Common UNIX Printing System
splix-2.0.0nb3      Driver for SPL printers (Samsung and Xerox)

Note. The Splix ppds are supposed to work for the SCX-4200 printer 
according to the listing on their home page.

Beside the needed tweaks to the xml configuration to administer the 
thing remotely (Listen and Location/Allow directives), not mentioning 
the SSL stuff that needed to be configured manually --- by all means, 
LPD was much simpler to use and configure --- I do not get any USB 
printer option when adding a printer through the interface.  Yes, cups 
was compiled with the spl and libusb options by default.  The libusb 
option doesn't seem to be required anyway since we are using 
ulpt(4)/usblp devices.  According to `pkg_info -D cups`, the DeviceURI 
should be usb:/ (ulpt) instead of usb:// (libusb).

So I added the printer from the command line,

lpadmin -p scx1 -v usb:/dev/ulpt0 -P 
/usr/pkg/share/cups/model/samsung/scx4200.ppd
lpadmin -p scx2 -v usb:/dev/ulpn0 -P 
/usr/pkg/share/cups/model/samsung/scx4200.ppd

and "Manage Printers" in the web interface said,

scx1 (Paused, Rejecting Jobs, Shared)
scx2 (Paused, Rejecting Jobs, Shared)

so I "resumed" and "enabled jobs" on it with the web interface and then 
tried to print a test page, which gives,

    Unsupported format "application/vnd.cups-banner".
    Unsupported format "application/vnd.cups-banner".

which is odd because those mime types are enabled,

# grep banner /usr/pkg/share/cups/mime/mime.types
application/vnd.cups-banner     string(0,'#CUPS-BANNER')

# grep banner /usr/pkg/share/cups/mime/mime.convs
application/vnd.cups-banner     application/postscript          33 
bannertops

Let-alone the proprietary driver question for the text-or-raw/samba 
approach, the CUPS setup is really a pain.  The ideal deal would be to 
use LPD with Splix ppds, if such a thing was doable.  For today and as a 
conclusion here, the CUPS tryout with USB is far from being a success.

> (I had to make a small patch to it - some compression parameter wasn't
> passed through from a configuration file and a code patch seemed simpler
> than debugging where it got lost. Here it is; maybe it helps you:

I guess I am not even that far yet:-)  But thanks

pierre-philipp