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

Martin Drab drab at kepler.fjfi.cvut.cz
Thu Jun 3 06:31:21 PDT 2004


On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Helge Blischke wrote:

> 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. 

Unfortunatelly, this line isn't there. (See the attached 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.

It is configured exactly like that. The problem isn't with pstops not 
running. Every job _is_ passed through the pstops filter, but the filter 
simply doesn't do the accounting if the source is generated with the 
HP PPD.

I've attached the HP PPD that I'm using, so that you could take a look if 
prehaps there is something missing or wrong (?). It is not exactly the 
original HP, I had to comment out the lines 46 through 70, because it 
generated a "@PJL ..." header to the resulting PostScript and as such it 
was allways totally rejected by the CUPS, so that nothing was printed. 
This variant works fine, except for the 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.

Could you please tell me how exactly should this line look like?

Thanks,
Martin Drab.





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