[Omniprint-developer] New Foomatic Generator

[Till K. <til...@gm...>]

Oi,

I have done major changes on the Foomatic data generator 
Omni/Foomatic/Foomatic.cpp to address many of the issues which I 
reported in the mails before. It has the following changes:

1. Clean-up of printer names: There is no manufacturer called "KS" or 
"HP-LaserJet". Now all manufacturer names are correctly resolved. 
Generic drivers (as "Generic 9-pin 80 col.") are under the manufacturer 
name "Generic". For four printers I didn't know the manufacturer name 
and I put them under "Others":

    BJ-230
    HDMF-NONE-FF
    LG-GIP 3000Q/3000+
    VP-6570K

Here I ask you for help. Which are the manufacturers of these printers. 
The BJ-230 is probably not a Canon, because Omni has already a BJ-230 
under "Canon".

2. Removed slashes and parantheses from the XML file names, this 
prevented some files from being written.

3. Made the Foomatic-database ID matching mechanism more reliable.

4. Made the page size (form) option not only setting the "form=..." in 
"-sproperties=...", but also adding a PostScript command to tell the 
page size to GhostScript itself ("-sPAPERSIZE=..." does not support all 
paper sizes which Omni supports).

5. Made the "-smonodither=GSMONO" option user-switchable, so that the 
user can choose between speed and quality. GhostScript dithering is the 
default.

6. Changed the Foomatic names of the options and choices to better fit 
to the names of other drivers, to PPD conventions, or simply to be 
shorter to type.

7. Changed the comment of the Omni-generated printer database entries 
and removed the printer name out of the "consumables" comment.

8. Because the generated Foomatic data is only usable on a machine with 
installed Foomatic, Foomatic printer entries for printers already listed 
in Foomatic are not generated any more. So installing the Foomatic data 
generated by Omni with the help of "foomatic-kitload" does not overwrite 
any files.

The modified Foomatic.cpp file and some additional files you can download on

    http://mandrakesoft.com/~tkamppeter/Omni-New-Foomatic.tar.gz

The files are the following:

1. Foomatic.cpp: The modified Foomatic data generator, put it into the 
Omni/Foomatic/ directory and then build as usual.

2. Omni-Foomatic.patch: This is a patch to make the new Foomatic.cpp out 
of the one currently on CVS. Here you can easily see my changes.

3. foomatic-omni-printerlist: Run this on a machine with installed 
Foomatic to get the table for the printer name/Foomatic-ID relations.

4. newDB: the Foomatic-ID table generated with foomatic-omni-printerlist 
from the current CVS of Foomatic. Note that the format has changed, 
between manufacturer and model is a dash now (the new Foomatic.cpp does 
not work with the old format).

During my tests of this new Foomatic data I found two additional bugs in 
Omni:

1. Okidata ML 321 only spills an empty page instead of printing the job, 
switching between the three compatibility modes "IBM Graphics printer", 
"IBM Proprinter", and "Epson FX" does not help. I have checked that it 
is not caused by Foomatic. Once the Foomatic-generated GhostScript 
command line is absolutely correct, and second, The same problem happens 
when calling GhostScript manually.

2. Epson Stylus Photo 1290 prints gibberish when a PostScript command 
for the paper size is prepended to the PostScript file. This is also not 
caused by Foommatic. The command line is correct and manually calling 
GhostScript with a document with the PostScript for the paper size 
inserted leads to the same problem. Removing the PostScript command 
reproduces the image again, but with some part at the top missing 
(because GhostScript assumes Letter size without the PostScript 
command). These tests are done with A4 paper size.

The HP LaserJet 2100 prints correctly, with the Foomatic-supplied 
PostScript command the image is printed completely in A4 format and with 
the correct y offset, it is only shifted to the right (as I told you 
already before). So the Foomatic data must be correct.

    Till