[cups] Driver for native XPS printers urgently needed

Helge Blischke helgeblischke at web.de
Sun Oct 11 12:43:05 PDT 2015


I’ve just uploaded a filter named gstoxps, written in Perl and based on Ghostscript’s xpswrite device,
to
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cupsaddons/gstoxps <http://sourceforge.net/projects/cupsaddons/gstoxps>

In contrast to my last post to cups at cups.org <mailto:cups at cups.org> further investigation revealed that
–	the output resolution can be set
but
–	trying to change the color model from the RGB default causes a "rangecheck in .putdeviceprops“ error 
	in Ghostscript (gs 9.16)
–	source images are converted to TIFF images, but vector graphics (including rendered text) is internally
	converted to an image in memory, the pixels of which are output as filled rectangles each, which leads
	to huge output file sizes.

Whatsowver, as it is, I think it can be used as is, but I urgently back the request to upgrade the xpswrite device
to a real high level device.

Regards,

Helge Blischke

> Am 11.10.2015 um 20:58 schrieb Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter at gmail.com>:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> in the segment of high-end laser printers there is a trend to XPS-only printers and this is a well-known protocol/PDL (Ghostscript/GhostPDL can be used with it, as both input and output format). Therefore it should be possible to develop a working generic XPS printer driver soon.
> 
> I got aware of this by this thread on the CUPS user mailing list:
> 
> Printing to native XPS printers using CUPS
> 
> on
> 
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/thread.html
> 
> or
> 
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027167.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027168.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027171.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027172.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027173.html
> 
> Ghostscript has already an "xpswrite" output device, but the device is missing the needed flexibility. Pages are converted to Tiff with 96 dpi for sending, Only RGB color is available as color space, ...
> 
> I want to request as a new feature for GS 9.19 that Ghostscript's "xpswrite" device gets a real printer driver where you can choose a resolution, color/bw, ...
> 
> Then I would add a gstoxps filter to cups-filters and a PPD for a "Generic XPS printer" to not need to list such printers as Paperweight and make it difficult for users to print from Linux on modern printers.
> 
> WDYT?
> 
>   Till




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