Gutenprint 5.1.5 Release

Welcome to Gutenprint 5.1.5! Please read these release notes
carefully.

Gutenprint, formerly named Gimp-Print, is a suite of printer drivers
that may be used with most common UNIX print spooling systems,
including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others. These drivers provide high
quality printing for UNIX (including Macintosh OS X 10.2, 10.3, 10.4,
and 10.5) and Linux systems that in many cases equal or exceed
proprietary vendor-supplied drivers in quality and functionality, and
can be used for demanding printing tasks requiring flexibility and
high quality. This software package includes an enhanced Print
plug-in for GIMP that replaces the plug-in packaged with GIMP, and
Ghostscript and CUPS drivers, as well as Foomatic data supporting the
Ghostscript driver.

Gutenprint has been renamed in order to clearly distinguish it from
GIMP. While this package started out as the original Print plugin
for GIMP, it has expanded into a collection of general purpose
printer drivers, and the new, enhanced Print plugin for GIMP is
now only a small part of the package. Furthermore, the name
Gutenprint recognizes Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the movable
type printing press. Finally, the word "guten" means "good" in
German.

Gutenprint currently supports over 600 printer models.

Gutenprint 5.1.5 is a development release of Gutenprint 5.1.

*** NOTE TO PACKAGERS: This is a DEVELOPMENT version of Gutenprint.
It should not be packaged as the principal release of Gutenprint
in any OS or distribution release. The most recent stable release
(the release with the second number being even -- for example,
5.0.1) should be used for that.

If you need a bug fix from the development release, you should
backport it to the stable release if possible. If you really
think you need the development release, please contact us at
gimp-print-devel@lists.sourceforge.net well in advance of your
packaging deadline to discuss your particular needs with us. We
normally back port bug fixes from the development release to the
next stable release, and we back port new printers and new
capabilities if we determine it's safe to.

By all means feel free to deliver this release as a
"gutenprint-unstable" release if you want to make bleeding edge
packages available as an option.

These release notes contain the following sections:

I) General Requirements
II) Changes from Previous Releases
A) New features in 5.1.5
B) New features in 5.1.4
C) New features in 5.1.3
D) New features in 5.1.2
E) New features in 5.1.1
F) New features in 5.1.0
III) Exceptions and Workarounds
A) General Issues
B) Build/Installation Issues

================================================================

I) GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

Gutenprint will run on any reasonably modern computer running Linux,
Macintosh OS X (10.2 or above), Solaris, or any other UNIX-like
operating system. If you plan to compile this package from source,
you will also need an ANSI C compiler, such as gcc (recommended). A
compiler is not required if you are installing a pre-compiled package.

Processor and memory requirements vary depending upon the printer and
runtime options selected; it is suggested that you have at least 64 MB
of memory for general purpose printing, 256 MB or more for high
quality printing on a good printer, and 1 GB or more for large format
printing at high resolution. You should have at least 50 MB of free
disk space to compile and install Gutenprint. Disk space requirements
for printing will vary depending upon how you use Gutenprint, but are
generally modest except as noted below. We recommend a processor
speed of at least 300 MHz. Fast printers may require a faster
processor to achieve maximum printing speed.

For general use, you should have the Common UNIX Printing System, CUPS
(version 1.1.15 or above) or Foomatic (2.0 or above) installed.
Please the rest of the release notes, in particular the Exceptions and
Workarounds, for full details on installation, as there is important
information to be aware of. CUPS is the printing system used on
Macintosh OS X 10.2 and above, and many other systems use it. The
combination of CUPS and Gutenprint provides a flexible, general
purpose printing system capable of producing the highest quality
output with any of the printers supported by this package. We
strongly recommend using CUPS with Gutenprint as a general-purpose
printing solution.

The enhanced Print plug-in for GIMP requires GIMP 2.0 or above (GIMP
2.2 recommended). This plug-in will work with any printing system,
and offers a comprehensive user interface to control all aspects of
the printing process. If you are printing photographs in large format
from GIMP at very high resolution, disk space requirements may be
substantial, and we recommend at least 2 GB of free disk space for
that purpose.

The Ghostscript driver requires GNU Ghostscript 6.53 or higher, ESP
Ghostscript 7.05 or higher, or AFPL Ghostscript 7.04 or higher. It
uses the IJS package included with these versions of Ghostscript to
create a driver that may be built much more easily than traditional
Ghostscript drivers. This driver should be used in conjunction with
Foomatic to configure printers.

Users of Macintosh OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger),
and 10.5 (Leopard) can use this package, as the printing system is
based on CUPS. For ease of installation, a pre-built package with
installer is normally supplied a few days after the release of the
source package. We strongly recommend that OS X users use the
pre-built package rather than attempt to build it themselves.

NOTE: This package will not work with any version of OS X 10.0 and
10.1 (such as 10.1.5). The printing system used with these versions
of OS X is not compatible with Gutenprint. OS X 10.2 and above use
CUPS as the basis of the printing system, which is compatible with
Gutenprint.

The README file included with this package provides full instructions
for building and installing Gutenprint.

================================================================

II) MAJOR CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS RELEASES

A) NEW FEATURES AND FIXES IN GUTENPRINT 5.1.5:

1) New printers supported in this release:

* Epson inkjet printers:

EPSON Stylus C110
EPSON Stylus C120
EPSON Stylus D120
EPSON PX V780

* PCL laser printers:

Sharp AR-M257

2) Preliminary support for the following printers:

* Canon inkjet printers:

Canon PIXMA iP8500
Canon PIXMA Pro 9500
Canon PIXMA MP610
Canon i80

3) The printer maintenance utility for EPSON inkjet printers,
escputil, now reports status more reliably. Previously some
people reported errors of the form "Unknown IEEE 1284.4 error";
these errors have been resolved.

In addition, escputil now correctly reports the ink color for
certain printers (in particular, printers using Claria (TM) inks
and printers using alternate ink cartridges (for example, the
Stylus Photo 1400 that allows either a photo black or a matte
black ink cartridge to be installed).

4) A few remaining problems with the PPD files have been fixed
(paper sizes for certain dye sublimation printers, and "Okidata"
has been renamed "Oki" to match the PPD specification for that
manufacturer).

5) A new dither algorithm, Ordered New, has been added. This
dither algorithm is most likely to improve output at low
resolutions, particularly when printing black and white. It
will only help on printers offering multiple drop sizes.

6) The color correction for the Canon PIXMA iP4200 has been improved.

7) The PPD file parsing code in the Postscript driver has been
rewritten.

We determined that the PPD file parsing code in the Postscript
driver was actually borrowed from CUPS, which is licensed under
the LGPL v2 and GPL v2 only. However, the remainder of the core
of Gutenprint is licensed under GPL v2 or higher. This is not
directly a license conflict -- it is permissible to mix code
licensed under the GPL v2 with code licensed under GPL v2 or
above -- but it means that Gutenprint (5.1.3 and 5.1.4, the two
releases that used this code) itself could only be licensed
under GPL v2, which is not the desire of this project, as it
would not permit usage with code licensed under GPL v3 (or
higher) only.

To resolve this, we wrote new PPD file parsing code that is
licensed under GPL v2 or above. Therefore, Gutenprint may now
be used with any code licensed as GPL v2 or any later version of
the GPL.

8) The CUPS driver in Gutenprint, and all associated utilities, are
now licensed as GPL v2 or higher. That code was previously
licensed as GPL v2 only. While that did not cause any direct
problems, since the CUPS driver does not form a library that
other code may wish to link against, it was licensed differently
from the rest of the Gutenprint project. That is now resolved,
and the entire Gutenprint code base is now licensed as GPL v2 or
higher.