GIMP & Printing ... A Small Problem

This week I installed a new HP LaserJet P1006 (mono-laser) using the newest recommended driver available from HPLIP (compiled from source, not installed as a package, since I am using Mandriva 2007.0). The printer puts out a perfect test page, as well as producing crisply printed pages from all apps I have tried thus far ... except from graphics files edited by GIMP.

Direct printing from GIMP is impossible, due to the HP P1006 not being supported yet by a Gutenprint driver. This was also true for my previous printer, a Canon BJC-610 inkjet. So, I tried my self-discovered workaround, which worked fine with the BJC-610; I imported a PDF-file (crossword puzzle), lightened the black squares in the puzzle grid with the color-fill tool to conserve toner, then saved in several formats: BMP, GIF, and PS. I then opened Gwenview and printed the BMP and GIF files. The PS file was printed using Konsole with the "lpr" command.

In every case the puzzle grid and clues printed very faintly, being just barely visible. The PDF-file, converted only (no color fill), also prints very faintly using Gwenview. The same PDF-file prints, as-is, perfectly, using KPDF (something which I could not do with the BJC-610), although the black squares in the puzzle grid eat-up a lot of toner.

What I need is another graphics editor to try, or some other procedure to try using GIMP, whereby I can import PDF-files, edit them, and export them in another format, BMP, GIF, etc.

I should also mention that the HP P1006 prints PUZ-files from AcrossLite very nicely. This was also something that I was unable to do directly using the Canon BJC-610. I am far ahead of where I was before, except for the little problem with GIMP. I have tried printing other unedited graphics files (PNG) from Gwenview, and the overall quality is poor (as expected from a mono-laser), but not as poor as files exported from GIMP.

The crossword puzzles, in PDF-format, can be found at:

http://www.pzzl.nl/newsday/crossword/

I solved my problem by using "Kuickshow" to print converted crossword puzzle files (PDF-to-GIF). "Kuickshow" has configuration settings that allow gamma and scaling to be adjusted, among many more options. Decreasing gamma in "Kuickshow" for grayscale GIF images edited in GIMP, results in prints having the desired contrast and toner density, while enabling toner to be conserved at the same time. Overall print quality is very acceptable, even with "printmode" set at "normal" for the HP LaserJet P1006. This is a very nice workaround for any pages that refuse to print "normally", not just for crossword puzzles.

I tried "Xpaint" as a possible solution, but it has many bugs, and is unusable for doing much of anything, although it imports and exports PDF-files, mangling them in the process. Avoid the "Xpaint" package.