Trouble printing from Windows directly to Cups

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

I tought this was due to a bug, but was told to post it to support forums instead.  Oh well, here it goes.

I had identical setup (to the one describe below) working with my old printer (Brother HL-1240, if I remember the model name correctly) under Fedora Core 2.  I got a new printer, Samsung ML-1740, and am having a trouble printing from Windows to Cups.  Things that used to simply work, do not work anymore.

The system where Cups is installed is an RHEL4 clone (CentOS 4.0).  I have configured Samsung ML-1740 printer (as ML-1710, no support for 1740 in foomatic yet, and couldn't get the driver distributed by Samsung to work).  I let system-config-printer utility generate configuration file (this worked perfectly in the past).

When I attempt to print from Linux box, everything is fine.  Then I added it as networked printer to my Windows XP box (directly using IPP protocol, I told Windows my printer is http://server.domain.com:631/printers/Samsung1740).  When I attempt to print from XP box, Cups complains in log files that it got application/octet-stream and hints that I need to enable raw printing support (I guess in mime.* files?).  So, I removed comments for application/octet-stream in /etc/cups/mime.* files, and restarted Cups.  Now, Cups is not complaining, however nothing is sent to the printer either when I submit a job from the XP box.  The log files suggest that the printing went fine.  I enabled debugging in cups.conf file, but nothing wrong is logged.

As temporary workaround, I told XP to use Apple LaserWriter Color 12/600 drivers (by trial and error I found that this printer has similar margins and printable area settings as my Samsung printer).  With them, XP generates PostScript job, and sends appropriate content-type (indicating it is sending PS).  However, using PS drivers on XP box, I don't have access to per-job settings such as toner saver (for example) and some other settings available in Samsung's driver.  I'd really like to use Samsung driver on Windows box, if at all possible.  I guess it should be, since I was able to do the same thing with my old Brother printer.

BTW, if anybody was able to make Samsung's PPD file for this printer and ppltospl2 filter to work with recent Linux distributions and stock Cups (as opposed to the one included on Samsung CD), please let me know.