[cups.general] Colors and accounting with HP LJ 4600

[Helge Blischke]

Martin Drab wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Helge Blischke wrote:
> 
> > Martin Drab wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have a problem, here, with the HP LJ 4600dn using
> > > CUPS 1.1.20 + SAMBA 3.0.2. When I use the PPD from the Wihdows HP drivers
> > > that identifies itself as "HP Color LaserJet 4600 PS v3010.107", the
> > > printing works, but the print accounting (i.e. logging into the
> > > /var/log/cups/page_log) does not! I thought I solved the problem by using
> > > the Foomatic hpijs driver. Accounting works there, but I've discovered
> > > another serious problem. The color tones are not correct, in fact they are
> > > _way_ off. So now it seems both PPD drivers are unusable.
> > >
> > > Can anybody help me on that one? I think the easiest way would be to fix
> > > the "HP Color LaserJet 4600 PS v3010.107" PPD to produce something (??)
> > > that would make it do the accounting. However, I don't know what should it
> > > be. Another way would be to fix the colors within the hpijs PPD, also no
> > > clue. :(
> > >
> > Isn't your printer a native PostScript printer?
> > If yes, don't use things like Foomatic.
> 
> It is, but as I said, when using the original HP drivers (which
> communicates in PostScript directly), the page accounting in CUPS isn't
> working, and I really need that. The Foomatic drivers were just a
> workaround for this problem. It worked fine until I realized, that it
> totally messes the colors. That's my problem, I'd like to force the
> original HP PPD to do the page accounting with CUPS, somehow. And,
> frankly, I don't know why it isn't working.
> 
Look into HP's PPD for a *JobPatchFile entry. If there is one, it
probably contains
PostScript code to set up y CRD (color rendering dictionary) tailored
for just this
printer, so you should use the vendor supplied PPD. 
In addition, how is your samba configured with respect to printing? You
should use
printing = cups and, on the windows side, set your printer instance
preferences
to "optimize for portability". Then - at leas with most applications
under Win - the
print job gets fed through CUPS' pstops filter which does (a
rudimentary) page accounting.

Another easy to implement way would be to insert an additional filter
(using the
*cupsFilter entry in the printer's PPD) which runs the PS job through
Ghostscript's
bbox device and uses what Ghostscript talks to count the pages.

Helge


-- 
H.Blischke at srz-berlin.de
H.Blischke at srz-berlin.com
H.Blischke at acm.org