Printing out the wrong colour most of the time

brwk at bevteccom.co.uk brwk at bevteccom.co.uk
Mon Dec 6 14:23:23 PST 2004


I've recently installed a new server based on an AMD Athlon 64 running the x86_64 edition of Fedora Core 3.  Connected to this server via the parallel port is an Epson Stylus Photo 900 inkjet printer.

I have CUPS configured and running (1.1.22rc1).  The CUPS test page prints out perfectly, as do images rendered into Epson-speak by the gimp-print part of Gimp.  The Redhat PrintConf tool's demo page mostly works - the logo is a bit odd, but the borders are black and the colour tabs in the center are fine.  When configured as a network printer to Windows, it prints out both the test page and a random sample of a web page just fine.

OK, so far, so good.

Just about all other text it prints, regardless of source although almost certainly through CUPS/foomatic PS->Epson-speak conversion, comes out in a medium shade of blue!  OpenOffice document, Evolution message, Web page in Firefox, old postscript file; they all come out with the text bright blue.  Since the test pages have already demonstrated that it can still DO black - my first thought was that the black ink cartridge had run out - that doesn't appear to be the problem.

Given that the test pages and images work, it appears that the problem is that the "default" black has somehow become blue, and it is those documents that do no EXPLICITLY state the colour for black test (ie most) that are rendered in blue.  In GhostView (ggv), all the text renders normally as black letters.

Thinking it might be a 64-bit compatibility issue - wouldn't be the first I found - I configured a 32-bit workstation to render the incoming postscript to Epson-speak and then forward that to the server for printing.  That too came out blue.

Has anyone else encountered anything like this, or got any suggestions as to how to track down the problem?  Any advice, even if only on how to track the problem down further, would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Bevis.





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