gimp-print-devel

[Gimp-print-devel] More dither hacks

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

I've committed yet another dither routine.  This one's on the
dither2-branch branch if anyone wants to play with it.  It's sort of a
hybrid between error diffusion and ordered.  It seems to do good
colors but poor smoothness, at least for 6 color printers (I suspect
that it will do very well for ordinary four color printers, at least
at maximum resolution).  I'm interested in how it does on variable dot
size printers (e. g. the 740).  I suspect it will be a bit grainy, but
I don't really know.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Error compiling gs-6.01 with Epson driver

[Jean-Jacques de J. <jea...@hp...>]

Robert L Krawitz wrote:
> 
> Try applying the following patch.
> 
> Index: contrib.mak.addon
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/gimp-print/print/Ghost/contrib.mak.addon,v
> retrieving revision 1.5
> retrieving revision 1.4
> diff -u -r1.5 -r1.4
> --- contrib.mak.addon   2000/02/26 00:13:10     1.5
> +++ contrib.mak.addon   2000/02/13 02:14:52     1.4
> @@ -5,8 +5,8 @@
>         $(GLOBJ)gdevstp-util.$(OBJ) \
>         $(GLOBJ)gdevstp-escp2.$(OBJ)
> 
> -stp.dev:       $(stp_) page.dev
> -       $(SETPDEV) stp $(stp_)
> +$(DD)stp.dev:  $(stp_) $(DD)page.dev
> +       $(SETPDEV) $(DD)stp $(stp_)
> 



OK, that worked, thanks!

JJJ

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Error compiling gs-6.01 with Epson driver

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 12:11:37 +0200
   From: Jean-Jacques de Jong <jea...@hp...>

   I tried to compile ghostscript-6.01 with the gimp-print Epson Stylus
   Photo drivers. However, I get the following error message:
   make: *** No rule to make target `obj/stp.dev', needed by `obj/ld.tr'. 
   Stop.

   What am I doing wrong?

Can you send the entire output?  This suggests that you didn't do all
of the makefile changes, or that there's a difference between gs 6.01
and 5.50 (which is what I use).

[Gimp-print-devel] Error compiling gs-6.01 with Epson driver

[Jean-Jacques de J. <jea...@hp...>]

I tried to compile ghostscript-6.01 with the gimp-print Epson Stylus
Photo drivers. However, I get the following error message:
make: *** No rule to make target `obj/stp.dev', needed by `obj/ld.tr'. 
Stop.

What am I doing wrong?

JJJ

[Gimp-print-devel] Rinkj pre-release

[Raph L. <ra...@ac...>]

Hi Gimp-print gang,

   I've just put up a pre-release of rinkj. You can read about it and
download the tarball from http://www.artofcode.com/rinkj/ . The
release is very rough, but if you have an Epson 600 or 640, you might
have fun playing with it. This release doesn't contain the Even Toned
screening algorithms, but things are looking _very_ good for the GPL
release of these algorithms soon.

   My current thinking is for rinkj to install a library (to be called
libreprint), and also provide a command line tool converting ppm's to
the native printer codes. I think it would make the most sense for
gimp-print to link with the library - that's probably also what
Ghostscript is going to do.

   I haven't frozen anything yet, so I'm very open to discussion.

Raph

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Re: Linux-printer

[Dave H. <da...@mi...>]

Robert L Krawitz wrote:
> 
[snip]
>    I am trying to decide if is better to buy an HP (like 815C or 930C)
>    or if the best choice is an Epson (like 740 TB). I need to print
>    both text/graphic and images in b/w and color.
> 
> Likewise, I don't know about these HP printers.
> 
>    May you give me your opinion?  Thanks in advance.  Best regards
> 
>                    Alessandro Piras

Alessandro,

The "photo mode" of the HP printers is not supported at all at
the moment, as information is hard to come by. Only "ordinary"
non-photo mode works at the moment, up to 600x600 for black
and 300x300 for colour.

Dave Hill

-- 
Dave Hill, Kempston, Bedford UK		da...@mi...
				davehill at users.sourceforge.net
Sicth munce ago, I cutn't evun spel enjuneer, and now I are one!

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Printer list too big.

[S. M. <sm...@rn...>]

Dave Hill wrote:
> 
> I have just noticed that the printer list has grown so large that
> it needs more than one "screen height" to fit it in, so the bottom
> ones are not visible.
> 
> This is with the "gimp 1.0" interface, i.e. the "gtk*" source files.
> 
> Any ideas??
> 
> Dave
> 
This is on my list of things to do.  The plan is to replace the option
menu with a GtkList.  A job search is keeping me from spending as much
time on it as I'd like, but that is second on the list (behind a dither
selection menu).  It will require some effort, so please be patient.

Steve
-- 
-----------------------------------------
Just because I have a short attention span
doesn't mean I
------------------------------------------

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: feature-request gimp-print

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

(please cc all messages to gimp-print-devel)

   Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 10:10:29 +0200
   From: Joern Clausen <jc...@ge...>

   The main point is: I don't want a user to select a combination of printer
   and driver (and possible media), because our users won't be able to
   do this. I'd have to give them a pre-configured setup, where they can
   eventually make changes, but they have to have a working startpoint.

OK.

   > The current way that printers are handled (the plugin runs lpc or
   > whatever to find out what printers are on the system) is a complete
   > botch.  We're looking at other ways of handling this.

   Er, it's a bit slow, but it's probably a good solution. I don't like
   unportable solutions (like parsing /etc/printcap) or maintaining another
   list of available printers. OK, if I have to keep a list of all printers
   with associated PPDs and other configs, that's acceptable.

Well, it's not a terribly portable solution either.  We've already
seen complaints about not parsing lpstat output correctly, and that
the command used actually does a full status of every printer, which
is horribly slow when there are 50 network-connected printers.

   >  We've been
   > thinking in terms of having no auto-discovery, and users can define
   > their own printers.

   Again, please consider dumb user, which are totaly unable to configure
   such things on their own, and who rely on their sys-admin to prepare
   a working configuration.

OK, that's a fair issue.  So perhaps we need to find a way to merge a
printer list defined by the system administrator into the user's
printer list.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

[Gimp-print-devel] Printer list too big.

[Dave H. <da...@mi...>]

I have just noticed that the printer list has grown so large that
it needs more than one "screen height" to fit it in, so the bottom
ones are not visible.

This is with the "gimp 1.0" interface, i.e. the "gtk*" source files.

Any ideas??

Dave

-- 
Dave Hill, Kempston, Bedford UK		da...@mi...
				davehill at users.sourceforge.net
Sicth munce ago, I cutn't evun spel enjuneer, and now I are one!

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Membership in HP Solution Provider Program

[Dave H. <da...@mi...>]

Eddie Maddox wrote:
> 
> Try some 97x coding and I'll see what happens on my 95x. Ok?
> 

I already checked in some support for the 900 series printers
to the CVS repository.

I added extra resolutions of 600x600, 1200x1200, 2400x1200 using
4-level dithers using the extended configuration command. These
are not "photo cart" modes though.

Maybe you can try them out and let me know what happens. They may
not work at all of course!

The other thing to do is to try and persuade the driver supplied
with the printer to produce a "print to file" in photo mode. The
HP drivers like to talk to the printer to see what cart(s) are
installed so you may have to fiddle around a bit. Print a small
thumbnail sized image so you get a small PCL output file, then 
mail me the source image and the PCL file to I can peer into it.
You could try running "pcl-unprint" on it, it will probably bomb
but should produce useful clues before it does.

Dave

-- 
Dave Hill, Kempston, Bedford UK		da...@mi...
				davehill at users.sourceforge.net
Sicth munce ago, I cutn't evun spel enjuneer, and now I are one!

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Re: Linux-printer

[Karl H. K. <kh...@kh...>]

Robert L Krawitz <rl...@al...> said: 
[ ... ]
> As best as I know, the 740 works pretty well now.  I haven't seen
how
> the output quality is.  Could someone with a 740 comment?

It's still not up to the windows driver, but it's pretty good.
I haven't had a lot of time lately to play with all the settings.
Maybe it's possible to get better results by adjusting the
driver's knows a little more. I think if you want a printer that
is supported by the Gimp plugin the 740 is probably one of the
better choices.

Karl Heinz

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Linux-printer

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 01:58:23 -0700
   From: Alessandro <Ale...@ds...>

   Dear Robert,

   I am writing from Italy.  I have to buy an inkjet printers to work
   under Linux and I saw that you and your group are developing
   "drivers" to print under Gimp.  Can you tell me if the Epson 740 is
   completely supported by your drivers?

As best as I know, the 740 works pretty well now.  I haven't seen how
the output quality is.  Could someone with a 740 comment?

   I am trying to decide if is better to buy an HP (like 815C or 930C)
   or if the best choice is an Epson (like 740 TB). I need to print
   both text/graphic and images in b/w and color.

Likewise, I don't know about these HP printers.

   May you give me your opinion?  Thanks in advance.  Best regards

		   Alessandro Piras

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Membership in HP Solution Provider Program

[Eddie M. <ed...@mn...>]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Dave Hill wrote:

> Eddie Maddox wrote:
> > 
> > Does it fully document the entire PCL command set for the new 9xx and
> > P1000 printers?
> 
> No it doesn't. It covers the 6xx, 8xx, 970C and 2000 series.

Ok. This may work here... I suspect the missing models came out later.

Check out HP's brag sites for each of the newest DeskJet printers. P1000,
93x, 95x, 97x. They don't say much, but maybe enough to figure out a few
things. Some feature sets and specs are given.

From what I see, what works for the 97x should work for the others, by and
large. My 95x has a two-sided attachment, which I have. That may have a
model-specific command. But the stuff common to all models should use the
same PCL commands. Right?

Try some 97x coding and I'll see what happens on my 95x. Ok?

------------------
Eddie Maddox
ed...@mn...

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Re: Membership in HP Solution Provider Program

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 21:33:41 +0100
   From: Dave Hill <da...@mi...>

   The terms say that I cannot assign or transfer membership, or any
   associated right OR BENEFIT (my caps).

   If you think that access to documentation is a benefit (which HP
   undoubtably will), then the answer is no (but I'm not a lawyer!).

Definitely check with them first.  Or reverse engineer it from some
printer output.

   When I've had chance to digest all the stuff, I'll try asking why
   they are unwilling to provide the docs for photo mode etc.

You might also point out to them that as Epson is considerably more
forthcoming with information they'll have a better shot at selling
into the Linux market than HP is.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Re: Printing

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   cc: gim...@so...
   From: sh...@al...
   Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 11:42:12 -0400

   > Can you point me to the tarball I could download?  I would love to
   > integrate your backends into the gnome-print rasterizer.

   Everything you could need should be available on Source Forge.

   http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1537

   There is a tarball here:

   http://download.sourceforge.net/gimp-print/print-3.1.2.tar.gz

That one should be in pretty good shape; the repository's another
option.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

[Gimp-print-devel] HP and Linux

[Dave H. <da...@mi...>]

Maybe it's not all bad news.

I have just found a site

http://internetsolutions.enterprise.hp.com/linux/

all about how HP is helping with Linux.

I spy some leverage maybe....

Dave

-- 
Dave Hill, Kempston, Bedford UK		da...@mi...
				davehill at users.sourceforge.net
Sicth munce ago, I cutn't evun spel enjuneer, and now I are one!

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Membership in HP Solution Provider Program

[Dave H. <da...@mi...>]

Eddie Maddox wrote:
> 
> Does it fully document the entire PCL command set for the new 9xx and
> P1000 printers?

No it doesn't. It covers the 6xx, 8xx, 970C and 2000 series.

I have also downloaded everything else I can lay my hands on,
some of which document the "configure raster data" command
but only for 4 level printing (basic C-Ret), and nothing about
colour modes other than KCMY.

That said, it may be that I can "extrapolate" from the current
driver to get it to work easily, though!

There seems to be many different documents of various ages, some
of which contradict others regarding the same printer series.
I now have 3 documents that cover the 1120 series, one that also
covers the 1220, one that covers the 300/400 series personal printers
an addendum for the 2500 series and two that cover 600/800 printers!

> And, #2, anything in the legalities about distributing said documentation
> to one and all without every one who has already paid their money (me, for
> one) for their brand new HP printer being required to sign up for HP's
> fancy Program first?

The terms say that I cannot assign or transfer membership, or any
associated right OR BENEFIT (my caps).

If you think that access to documentation is a benefit (which HP
undoubtably will), then the answer is no (but I'm not a lawyer!).

When I've had chance to digest all the stuff, I'll try asking why
they are unwilling to provide the docs for photo mode etc.

Dave

-- 
Dave Hill, Kempston, Bedford UK		da...@mi...
				davehill at users.sourceforge.net
Sicth munce ago, I cutn't evun spel enjuneer, and now I are one!

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Re: Printing

[<sh...@al...>]

> Can you point me to the tarball I could download?  I would love to
> integrate your backends into the gnome-print rasterizer.

Everything you could need should be available on Source Forge.

http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1537

There is a tarball here:

http://download.sourceforge.net/gimp-print/print-3.1.2.tar.gz

Eric

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Printing

[Miguel de I. <mi...@he...>]

> We already have one driver (for all the Epson printers that we
> otherwise support) that can be built as a Ghostscript driver.  There's
> no particular reason the others couldn't be, it's just that nobody's
> done them yet.  The basic driver model is such that it should be
> fairly easy to plug into most any kind of raster image source.
> Currently we support RGB/A, K/A, and a few indexed options; adding
> others (such as 12 or 16 bit RGB, for example) is just a matter of
> writing the appropriate lookup functions.

Can you point me to the tarball I could download?  I would love to
integrate your backends into the gnome-print rasterizer.

Now, that being said, we are going to make a few changes to
Gnome-Print to enable people to use the non-bitmap-priting features of
their printers (for common, simple cases like reports that do not need
a lot of printing power and definetly not a huge bitmap :-).

Miguel.

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Printing

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   Cc: gim...@so...
   From: Miguel de Icaza <mi...@he...>
   Date: 04 Apr 2000 21:44:01 -0400

   > I noticed in your Slashdot interview that you said that one of GNOME's
   > greatest needs is for more printer drivers for gnome-print.  Well, in
   > the gimp-print project (the Gimp Print plugin, which a group of us
   > have split off as its own separate project from the Gimp) we have a
   > fair number of print drivers, mostly for Epson but also some HP and
   > Canon printers.  We also have a dithering engine that works fairly
   > well that supports all this stuff.

   That sounds slick!  So time to merge those printers I would say.

   Basically gnome-print has a postscript imaging model, and we can
   provide the drivers with an RGB buffer to dump into the printer.  So
   my guess is that we want to do this

We already have one driver (for all the Epson printers that we
otherwise support) that can be built as a Ghostscript driver.  There's
no particular reason the others couldn't be, it's just that nobody's
done them yet.  The basic driver model is such that it should be
fairly easy to plug into most any kind of raster image source.
Currently we support RGB/A, K/A, and a few indexed options; adding
others (such as 12 or 16 bit RGB, for example) is just a matter of
writing the appropriate lookup functions.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Printing

[Miguel de I. <mi...@he...>]

> I noticed in your Slashdot interview that you said that one of GNOME's
> greatest needs is for more printer drivers for gnome-print.  Well, in
> the gimp-print project (the Gimp Print plugin, which a group of us
> have split off as its own separate project from the Gimp) we have a
> fair number of print drivers, mostly for Epson but also some HP and
> Canon printers.  We also have a dithering engine that works fairly
> well that supports all this stuff.

That sounds slick!  So time to merge those printers I would say.

Basically gnome-print has a postscript imaging model, and we can
provide the drivers with an RGB buffer to dump into the printer.  So
my guess is that we want to do this

> Personally, I think that having a heavyweight standalone print plugin
> for the Gimp is exactly the wrong direction to go, and indeed one of
> our goals is to eventually get rid of the plugin except as a thin glue
> layer.

Sounds good.

> One area that we really want to look at is how to specify
> printer-specific options.  There are a lot of these (e. g. different
> ways of producing output, different paper types, etc.) and we need a
> framework for all of this to fit into.

Yes, I agree.  And we do not have this yet.  But it needs to talk to
the various printing backends that people have done (VA stuff provides
access to the database of features available on a printer)

> If you'd like to check out what we have on gimp-print.sourceforge.net,
> please feel free to do so.  It's all (of course :-) ) GPL'ed.

Mhm.  Currently gnome-print is LGPL.  This might be a serious problem.

Miguel.

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: feature-request gimp-print

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 17:35:35 +0200
   From: Joern Clausen <jc...@ge...>

   I'm using your print plug-in for Gimp. It seems to do a great job. But
   I'd like to propose some additions:

    - Sometimes it's necessary to print to a file, but still have
      certain properties defined. We have a HP DesignJet (A0 size plotter),
      which is not available to all users. Still, they should select this
      printer in the dialog, to get the correct config via the PPD file,
      and print their image to a file.

      Strange enough, *after* selecting this printer, and switching back
      to "File", the media sizes are still there, so one can select A0 then.
      Maybe offering a "print to file" option in the setup dialog of each
      printer would be better.

That's an interesting idea.  You should be able to select any driver
at all with any printer, though, so I don't quite see what's happening
here.  It sounds like there's a bit of a bug in terms of paper size
handling, though.  If you select any given printer type, you should
have all of its properties available irrespective of what printer
you're printing to.

    - I'd like to prepare a global printerrc, which contains the correct
      defaults (especially PPD files) for all our printers. I don't know
      if Gimp can be configured to copy additional files to the user's
      .gimp directory. Maybe a global file in Gimp's share directory, which
      the print plugin reads in addition to the user's copy, wouldn't be bad.

The current way that printers are handled (the plugin runs lpc or
whatever to find out what printers are on the system) is a complete
botch.  We're looking at other ways of handling this.  We've been
thinking in terms of having no auto-discovery, and users can define
their own printers.  I'm not quite sure how your idea would work in
all cases (since the shared copy can't be written back to, and since
on some systems users install their own copies of the Gimp), but
certainly your suggestion is timely.

   Regards,
     Joern

   --
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Joern Clausen                                        Computer Support Team 
    jc...@Ge...                    Dept. of Biology / Genetics
    +49 (0)521/106-4826                                University of Bielefeld

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

[Gimp-print-devel] Printing

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

I noticed in your Slashdot interview that you said that one of GNOME's
greatest needs is for more printer drivers for gnome-print.  Well, in
the gimp-print project (the Gimp Print plugin, which a group of us
have split off as its own separate project from the Gimp) we have a
fair number of print drivers, mostly for Epson but also some HP and
Canon printers.  We also have a dithering engine that works fairly
well that supports all this stuff.

Personally, I think that having a heavyweight standalone print plugin
for the Gimp is exactly the wrong direction to go, and indeed one of
our goals is to eventually get rid of the plugin except as a thin glue
layer.

One area that we really want to look at is how to specify
printer-specific options.  There are a lot of these (e. g. different
ways of producing output, different paper types, etc.) and we need a
framework for all of this to fit into.

If you'd like to check out what we have on gimp-print.sourceforge.net,
please feel free to do so.  It's all (of course :-) ) GPL'ed.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

[Gimp-print-devel] Re: Membership in HP Solution Provider Program

[Eddie M. <ed...@mn...>]

On Sat, 1 Apr 2000, Dave Hill wrote:

> The PCL Developer's guide that is available is dated Dec 99; it
> has a few extra things documented, but not the "configure

Does it fully document the entire PCL command set for the new 9xx and
P1000 printers? 

And, #2, anything in the legalities about distributing said documentation
to one and all without every one who has already paid their money (me, for
one) for their brand new HP printer being required to sign up for HP's
fancy Program first?

------------------
Eddie Maddox
ed...@mn...

Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Epson 640 questions

[S. M. <sm...@rn...>]

Robert L Krawitz wrote:
> 
> The current mechanism is so incredibly fragile.  I'd actually really
> like to rip out this autodetect stuff altogether.  Maybe for default
> printers just define the "file" pseudoprinter, a default printer using
> lpr if lpr exists, a default printer using lp if lp exists, and (more
> importantly) a Create Printer dialog.  Mitsch or Steve, feel like
> putting in a Create Printer?A
> 
I'll put it on my to do list, unless Mitsch gets to it first.  I'm still
struggling to get gimp 1.1.18 to compile and install (requires some perl
stuff I didn't have, at least so far) so I can compile the latest cvs. 
I had your dither button 75% done, but have to get things merged
successfully.

Steve
-- 
-----------------------------------------
Just because I have a short attention span
doesn't mean I
------------------------------------------