[cups.general] Problems with text quality

Derek Chen-Becker dchenbecker at gmail.com
Sat Jan 5 17:06:46 PST 2008


I'm not sure if this is a driver/CUPS issue or if it's my printer. I
have an HP LaserJet 3052 (printer/scanner) that prints great under
Windows. It claims to be Postscript Level 3 compatible and I'm pretty
sure it uses PCL 6 under Windows, but when I try to print using either
the recommended Postscript driver in CUPs or the HPIJS driver in CUPS,
text quality is awful. Here are samples of the output. First, Windows:

http://frogwerks.com/printer/windows-pcl6.png

Strong and crisp, even though the scanner apparently doesn't get good
black levels as evidenced here. But here's postscript output, whether I
use regular lpr or even "lpr -o raw":

http://frogwerks.com/printer/recommended-postscript.png

As you can see, it's like the text has been dithered. Dithering on
images is atrocious, too. I get slightly better results with the HIPJS
driver, although there is still some light dithering-like behavior:

http://frogwerks.com/printer/hpijs-cups.png

This is CUPS version 1.3.2 in Ubuntu Gutsy. I've tried postscript output
from openoffice (Cairo) and LaTeX (dvips) and both show the same behavior.

Thanks,

Derek





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