Multiple printing problems 14.1, CUPS?
 

Hello all,

I was having problems with slowness in LibreOffice 4.1 after going from Slackware 14.0 to 14.1 and found several printing issues as well. I went back to LibreOffice 4.0.4 from the last set of AlienBob packages I had but still can't print properly.

I have an HP Photosmart Premium Plus which was recognized by CUPS in both Slackware 14.0 and 14.1. But in Slackware 14 I could select the marginless paper sizes for photo and letter, Slackware 14.1 I cannot select those paper sizes so when I print something I get a border around it where the printing is cut off.

Also in Slackware 14.0 I could print two pages per sheet fine, Slackware 14.1 it does not rotate so page two goes off the side.

What version of CUPS was in 14.0? Can I remove CUPS from 14.1 and go back to the version from 14 so see if thats where the features went missing?

14.0
14.1
-Current
All seem to use the same cups version, cups-1.5.4

Hmm, where is the difference then?

Ok,went upstairs to my Slackware 14.0 system and and the same doc printed fine.

Are you using the HPLIP driver for your Photosmart? This was upgraded from 3.12.9 in Slackware 14.0 to 3.13.10 in Slackware 14.1. If you are using it, that would be a place to look. Also depending on how you upgraded to 14.1 you might still be using a PPD file for your printer from the older package, unless you deleted and recreated the printer in CUPS (or went through the reconfigure steps and re-selected the driver).

I'm not saying this would make a difference, just throwing out ideas.

Ok, thats it then. I removed hplip from 14.1 and replaced with hplip from 14 and it works fine now.

I should have mentioned that I didn't upgrade from 14 to 14.1 I did a clean install then just remounted my /home partition.
Seems I have lost the use of the scanner now as well. Same -L listed it one time but each try after that it doesn't so I can't choose it for use as a scanner in anything.

Slackware isn't a supported distro by hplip so I'm unsure of how much help they could give. I was going to open a bug report that 3.12.9 to 3.13.10 lost some functionality but I don't know any details about how the slackware package was built, could it have been configured differently between 14 and 14.1?

Scanner and printer are the same box, right? (A multifunction or all-in-one)

Is there more to the model than "HP Photosmart Premium Plus", such as a number? (c309, c310, c410?)

Perhaps someone has the same model and can help.

Loss of paper size/margin options is very likely in the printer model file (PPD file). I can't see why HP would change a PPD for a working printer, but if you tell me the printer model and/or which PPD you were using (CUPS shows this under Make and Model) I can take a look at the 2 versions.

Yes, its the all in one c410. In the newer HPLIP the borderless par sizes were missing so a couple documents I have where I print completely to the margins would cut off about 1/2". Also the multiple pages per sheet did not work if I tried to print two pages per sheet it would not rotate the overall document and instead print them with the second page going off the side and blank space at the bottom. Even trying to manually change the rotation didn't help.

There are two separate printer drivers available for the Photosmart Premium Plus c410: one using the hpijs driver, and one using the hpcups driver. (Under 14.1, they actually show up as 3 separate entries in the CUPS menu, but 2 are actually the same.) Is it possible you were using one of them for 14.0, and a different one for 14.1? They look like this in the CUPS model selection menu:
As far as I can see, both support borderless printing, but differently. The one for the hpcups driver lets you directly select a borderless paper size: Letter, vs Letter Borderless. The one for the hpijs driver works differently: you select your paper size (Letter), then on the Quality selection (which might be called something else, depending on the application) you can select one of the Full Bleed entries. This should give you borderless printing.

If this seems helpful, I suggest you try both drivers (you can configure 2 CUPS printers, one for each, to the same printer device) and see which one works best for you.

Thanks, that seems to be it. I was able to print both to the border and 2 pages per sheet with the hpcups driver. I don't see any option for Full Bleed or borderless or such on the ijs, I wonder if the issue is there that that quality section isn't getting passed to all apps. I hope they don't drop the cups version in later revisions.

I'm going to have to try the custom paper size again, I had issues with it in Slackware 14.0, maybe it will work now. I was trying to print on 8.5 x 5.5 rather than two pages per sheet on 8.5 x 11 because the ratio isn't the same that did give a lot of white space on two sides but making a custom size or even choosing 5x7 I was having issues that it was getting mixed up between portriate and landscape.