Bug 17558 - printing on Okipage 8w Lite is troublesome
Summary: printing on Okipage 8w Lite is troublesome
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Branch 4.0
Classification: Distributions
Component: foomatic-db (show other bugs)
Version: 4.0
Hardware: all Linux
: P2 normal
Assignee: Nobody's working on this, feel free to take it
QA Contact: Q.A. 4.0
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2008-10-14 03:03 MSD by Ivan Zakharyaschev
Modified: 2014-11-05 20:16 MSK (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments
/etc/cups/ppd/oki.ppd (8.09 KB, text/plain)
2008-10-14 03:03 MSD, Ivan Zakharyaschev
no flags Details

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Description Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-14 03:03:41 MSD
Created attachment 2995 [details]
/etc/cups/ppd/oki.ppd

foomatic-db-3.0.2-alt6.20071012
cups-1.2.12-alt6.M40.1

I configured CUPS for Okipage 8w Lite through the standard means (web interface).

The printing is troublesome: 

For example, I was going to print 3 pages from Firefox. At first, the printer printed the first page, then got stuck. So turned off and on the printer. After that, it printed the 3rd page from my job. So, I was missing the 2nd one. Then I sent it as another job to the printer, but again it was on fire or like that, and the job got lost. So, I sent this page once more after resetting the printer, and finally it was printed, and I had all 3 wanted pages.

Perhaps, oki4drv (http://www.openprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=oki4drv ) would work than oki4w (http://www.openprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=oki4w&fromprinter=Oki-Okipage_8w_Lite ) better in my case... (or not).

I have also posted this description at http://forums.linux-foundation.org/read.php?33,1028,4337 .
Comment 1 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-14 03:07:19 MSD
Fedora and Mandriva have/used to have a special daemon for these printers: 

http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/SPECS/printer-filters-utils/oki4w.startup
http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewvc/devel/oki4linux/oki4linux.init?view=log

From description: A special daemon developed by Grant Taylor to \
#              support the OKI 4w and compatible winprinters. \
#              These printers have high requirements concerning \
#              timing and therefore one cannot use their driver \
#              directly out of a printer spooler (CUPS, LPD). To \
#              solve this problem, one lets the spooler send the \
#              job to this deamon. Activate this daemon when you \
#              have one of these printers and set up a CUPS queue \
#              for your printer with "oki4w_install".
Comment 2 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-14 03:08:47 MSD
This happens in installed Lite 4.0.3.
Comment 3 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-14 04:01:40 MSD
I see, there used to be oki4daemon in ALTLinux, too: https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1078 .
Comment 4 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-11-25 20:52:15 MSK
(In reply to comment #0)

> For example, I was going to print 3 pages from Firefox. At first, the printer printed the first page, then got stuck. So turned off and on

It's much much worse for JPEG images (it can be useful, say, for scanned texts). As a result of my observations, JPEGs should be considered unprintable with the currently supplied driver (in Lite 4.0.3).

For example:

$ rpm -qf /usr/share/printer-testpages/photo-testpage.jpg
printer-testpages-2.0-alt2
$  gqview /usr/share/printer-testpages/photo-testpage.jpg

and in the menu: "Файл" > "Напечатать"

The result: the printer prints an upper part of the image, and then is "on fire". It should be reset. The next attempt gives the same bad result.

I queued 6 jobs (to print this file) one after another. The result was: 3 good pages, 3 bad pages (only an upper part), intermixed, and sometimes with a long pause. (I did reset the printer when needed in the process.)

For another file with a scanned text, my attempts were even worse. Out of around 15 attempts, there was not a single good page! Mostly only an upper part was printed and it was displaced in the direction up.

I suspect that the design of the current driver is flawed: when this stupid printer expects a "real-time" reaction, the driver starts to do processing and is not on time. (And it's noticeable on pictures, because the processing of pictures takes more time.) It should do the processing before it starts talking to the printer. 

(In Windows, the work of the printer is not perfect (it requires  manual retries on some error conditions), but at least it prints all queued pages in complete form.)
Comment 5 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2009-03-30 15:29:25 MSD
There has been some experience of using this printer among ALT users: http://lists.altlinux.org/pipermail/community/2005-January/562243.html . I wonder whether they were able to achieve the relative stability of printing (as in Windows), so that I could try to repeat their success by trying different programs, or this printer has always worked very bad under linux.
Comment 6 Michael Shigorin 2014-11-05 20:16:46 MSK
В 4.0/branch исправления не будут вноситься уже технически (заглушена очередь на сборку), поэтому прошу ошибки, актуальные для sisyphus/p7/t7, перевесить на текущие ветки или сизиф.