Re: [Printing-user-general] Why has nothing changed?

Glendon Gross wrote:
> Well,   I recently bought a Okidata C3200 color laser.  Windows printing
> is excellent, and the vendor supplied driver
> works well under OS X.   After repeated failures to print to it from
> Suse Linux 8.2, even after installing the latest CUPS, I  finally called
> Okidata for support.  The support technician from Okidata explained that
> their engineers were able to write a driver
> for OS X, but don't have plans to release a Linux driver.  So the end
> result is that for this particular non-postscript printer,
> Linux support is non existent.   Consequently I have to praise Apple for
> supplying Okidata with the hooks that they needed
> to write a working driver for OS X.   The driver uses Gimp-print, and I
> was unable to port it to linux.
> 
> Incidentally I do have CUPS printing working on the Suse machine for an
> HP 4100 laser that is hanging off a Sun workstation running Solaris 2.6
> as a LPD printer;  So I know that the version of CUPS on the Suse
> machine works... but not with the Okidata C3200.  Very frustrating!
> I recently upgraded the Suse machine to the latest Suse,  Novell's
> version 10.1 which is supplied on DVD with the July 2006 issue of
> Linux Pro Magazine.  CUPS printing still worked flawlessly to the LPR
> printer after the upgrade, but  still does not work with the C3200.
> Okidata wants you to buy a more expensive model in order to support
> Postscript.    For now I am still impressed that the Okidata
> engineers were able to write a working raster driver for OS X.    At
> $299.00, the C3200 was a good buy and I am willing to forgive
> the lack of linux printing.
> This may give you some understanding of why people praise Apple in this 
> situation.
> 

If you have the Mac with the C3200 and your Linux machines on the same
network you can print from the Linux boxes to the C3200 when you use the
Mac as print server. You need to install GhostScript on the Mac (so that
PostScript files from the PCs are understood by the Mac, get GhostScript
from the Fink repository or from http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/)
and share/broadcast the printer on the Mac to other CUPS machines. The
clients do not need any driver, it is always the driver on the server
which is used.

   Till