Re: Mozilla, cups, xprint, KDE/kprinter woes

Bob Horvath wrote:
> I've used Linux and Mozilla for years, and have recently gotten 
> frustrated by the crappy print quality I get.
> 
> I have an Epson Stylus Photo 900.  I use cups with gimpprint to print to 
> it.
> 
> I also have a raw print queue for printing to the printer from a Windows 
> machine.
> 
> One problem that has driven me crazy is that Mozilla always showed the 
> raw queue first, and then the epson queue, and then the postscript 
> default one which goes to kprinter.  If I wasn't paying attention, or 
> someone else tried printing to my computer, it would send
> postscript (I am guessing) to the printer and I would get garbage coming 
> out - lots of pages of it too.
> 
> I did some investigation and figured it I could get it to print using 
> kprinter, that would be good.  Removing xprint got rid of Mozilla 
> finding out about the raw and epson queues.  It also got rid of some of 
> the features of print preview such as changing the size of the printout.

You can set the default printer for XPrint:
http://xprint.mozdev.org/docs/Xprint_FAQ.html#configure_default_printer

see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119491 and its 
dependencies for the missing features in print preview.

> I am not sure the scaling ever actualy worked as I could never seem to 
> get something printed that looked like the preview.  The output was 
> always stretched vertically.  Without xprint, print preview and the 
> output do not match.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153080

> Basically I have concluded that printing on Linux from Mozilla sucks, 
> but I would like to make sure that my conclusion is based on fact, and 
> not on ignorance.  Is there a way to improve this?

Mozilla printing (windows also, although perhaps not as bad) is not very 
good.  Certainly behind most other parts of Mozilla and printing with 
other browsers.  But progress is being made.

-- 
Andrew Schultz
[email protected]
http://www.sens.buffalo.edu/~ajs42/