[cups.general] postscript printed as text

[David Schlenk]

I'm using cups-1.1.20 with a HP Color LaserJet 4650. Works fine from 
Windows 2k/XP and OS X, but from Win9x the HP supplied driver gets 
typed as text/plain by cups and thus the PS code is sent to the printer 
as text. CUPS types it as text, runs it through texttops, pstops, and 
then a custom page counting filter I wrote called bboxpages.

I haven't changed anything in mimes.types/convs other than to enable 
raw printing for our non-PS printers.  I'm using the PPD from the 2k/xp 
driver in CUPS.

I had issues with PDF files (they'd get stuck such that one page would 
keep printing repeatedly until the printer was powered off and the job 
deleted from the queue) with newer versions of CUPS, so I've stayed at 
1.1.20.

I'd use the CUPS windows drivers, but they only support 2k/xp, correct? 
I haven't had good success with those drivers on those platforms, 
either, particularly when using advanced printer features (duplex 
units, additional trays, etc).

Using the MS supplied "HP Color Laserjet PS" driver in Windows 98SE did 
print correctly, but I don't know how to get at that driver in order to 
make it available via samba, and it doesn't support the 4650 correctly, 
sending jobs at 300dpi rather than 600.

I searched the archives and didn't find any solutions provided to the 
many folks who have asked this question before. I've had this happen on 
other printers, notably the HP LaserJet 4100 printer, but after trying 
various older versions of the HP drivers I found one that worked. I 
don't have that option for this printer/architecture.

Anyone have any luck fixing something similar to this?
--
David Schlenk
Operating Systems Analyst
Bethel University
Saint Paul, Minnesota
david-schlenk at bethel.edu