[cups.development] [RFE] STR #3083: simple printer alignment for end users

Tom Horsley tom.horsley at att.net
Fri Jan 30 08:25:27 PST 2009


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[STR New]

The contents of .ppd files are mysterious files full of gibberish
to ordinary users (like me), yet printers often need tweaks for
exact alignment. I have used the perl+postscript alignmargins
stuff with success, but it is far from simple to deal with, and it
only works on full size pages. If (as is my case now) you are trying
to tweak the alignment to print on DVD/CD media, the alignmargins
technique doesn't work very well (for one thing, there aren't any
corners on DVDs :-).

A relatively simple user interface that would allow a mere mortal
to get out a ruler and tell CUPS to shift the page by X and Y and
scale the dimensions a bit vertically and horizontally would be a
huge benefit for those times when you need exact alignment.

Once that is in place, maybe CUPS could sponsor a google summer of
code project to let you printout a pattern in the printer, then pop
that printout into the scanner on top of the multi-function device
and automatically deduce the corrections needed from the scanned
image :-).

Even without adding any code, a simple (easy to find) web page on the
CUPS web site documenting how to add such tweaks to the .ppd file
without first becoming both a CUPS and postscript guru would be nice.

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L3083
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