--- In [email protected], William Horne <whorne504@...> wrote:
>
> I am running Ubuntu 10.10 I can not get the printer to work in Ubuntu works
> fine in windows xp. Any suggestions?
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Print in Windows?

But seriously now printing can be a complicated beast no matter what the 
platform. Linux likely wouldn't even exist today if not for a certain someone 
not getting the source code with a new printer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

But then again we're not all St. IGNUcius now are we?

Anyhow I just wanted to illustrate the gravity of printing with a historical 
perspective to illuminate the fact that this is isn't Linux vs Windows vs OSes 
that don't even exist anymore! Printing has always been an issue. I've actually 
found printing to be much better at times in Linux than I've seen Windows do 
with the exact same hardware.

But in all fairness I never setup a Postscript preprocesser in Windows either 
like I have in Linux. 

 http://i.imgur.com/ZTPRr.jpg

The same file printed in Windows and Linux, I just used scissors to cut each 
print out in half so I could display them together better. I'll let you guess 
which printed what (Hint: how I said it is how they are in the pictures 
Windows, Linux).

So now that should establish my pedigree with respect to printing on Windows 
and Linux platforms. Along with a bit of viva la difference thrown in for good 
measure.

I'll be honest I'll strike up a deal with the Devil if it gets me the results 
I'm after I really don't care. The ends justify the means for me always. Often 
my ends aren't simple so I am willing to do what it takes in order to achieve 
them. In case anyone is wondering what those lovely prints were they're a 
resist mask for an acid etching process to make a printed circuit board and 
they have to be rather accurate, to within one hundredth of an inch or better.

They were both printed out on a Postscript type 1 printer with limited RAM in 
it and like I said I wasn't using a Postscript preprocessor on Windows, just 
printing direct. Windows did the best it could which ended up being something 
on the order of 36 DPI (note the faint pencil marks on the lower left of the 
print on the left where I marked out the "dots") on a printer mechanically 
capable of 300 DPI. So I assume Windows just did the math and sent the printer 
as much data as it figured the poor old thing could handle.

Linux obviously used other trickery to achieve superior results. That trickery 
is called Ghostscript.

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Sounds spooky and it is! Now I've read this thread and no one has made mention 
of this mysterious creature at all. Let me tell you I've done a bit of printing 
in Linux and without this jazz unless you're printing plain text you're NOT 
going to get what you expect!

Printing on Linux is still a lot like how Fred Flintstone drove to work, feet 
through the floorboards! In order to achieve superior results you are going to 
have to feel the pebbles beneath your feet. You WILL have to do some grunt 
work, and burn up a LOT of shoe leather in the process as well.

Sure things are a little better today than they were back in the bad old days 
of LPRng and editing your printcap file but not by much! Whenever I setup a 
printer on Linux it still takes me some time to completely tweak it to get 
maximum benefits from the hardware (lately I've just been printing in Windows 
myself due to a variety of circumstances). Personally I prefer how it used to 
be over how it is today, it was more robust and cut and dried as to what needed 
to be done. Made the user take some note of the entire process as well.

So in conclusion if you want to print on Linux understand how filters work, and 
how to work with filters as well, how the print spooler works, each step in the 
complicated dance that has to happen to get a job through the system. When 
you're done the ends just might justify the means. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CUPS-block-diagram.svg

The word of the topic is gestalt. Without this concept Linux printing will be 
frustrating at best. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Good luck!



------------------------------------

To unsubscribe from this list, please email 
[email protected] & you will be removed.Yahoo! Groups 
Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    [email protected]

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Reply via email to