I'm sorry you've had trouble printing things, Paul. I guess I'm lucky there: I've never had any problem printing with Windows - XP or Vista - or Mac's System 7, years ago. Quality has never been an issue either. And I don't recall any problems with the few pages I printed in Linux Mint - at least not until it decided my printer didn't have enough ink for it to work. (Which it was wrong about. :) )
Meg
--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <pfrederick1@...> wrote:
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>
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> --- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, William Horne <whorne504@> wrote:
> >
> > I am running Ubuntu 10.10 I can not get the printer to work in Ubuntu works
> > fine in windows xp. Any suggestions?
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
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> Print in Windows?
>
> But seriously now printing can be a complicated beast no matter what the platform. Linux likely wouldn't even exist today if not for a certain someone not getting the source code with a new printer.
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
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> But then again we're not all St. IGNUcius now are we?
>
> Anyhow I just wanted to illustrate the gravity of printing with a historical perspective to illuminate the fact that this is isn't Linux vs Windows vs OSes that don't even exist anymore! Printing has always been an issue. I've actually found printing to be much better at times in Linux than I've seen Windows do with the exact same hardware.
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> But in all fairness I never setup a Postscript preprocesser in Windows either like I have in Linux.
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> http://i.imgur.com/ZTPRr.jpg
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> The same file printed in Windows and Linux, I just used scissors to cut each print out in half so I could display them together better. I'll let you guess which printed what (Hint: how I said it is how they are in the pictures Windows, Linux).
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> So now that should establish my pedigree with respect to printing on Windows and Linux platforms. Along with a bit of viva la difference thrown in for good measure.
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> I'll be honest I'll strike up a deal with the Devil if it gets me the results I'm after I really don't care. The ends justify the means for me always. Often my ends aren't simple so I am willing to do what it takes in order to achieve them. In case anyone is wondering what those lovely prints were they're a resist mask for an acid etching process to make a printed circuit board and they have to be rather accurate, to within one hundredth of an inch or better.
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> They were both printed out on a Postscript type 1 printer with limited RAM in it and like I said I wasn't using a Postscript preprocessor on Windows, just printing direct. Windows did the best it could which ended up being something on the order of 36 DPI (note the faint pencil marks on the lower left of the print on the left where I marked out the "dots") on a printer mechanically capable of 300 DPI. So I assume Windows just did the math and sent the printer as much data as it figured the poor old thing could handle.
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> Linux obviously used other trickery to achieve superior results. That trickery is called Ghostscript.
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> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
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> Sounds spooky and it is! Now I've read this thread and no one has made mention of this mysterious creature at all. Let me tell you I've done a bit of printing in Linux and without this jazz unless you're printing plain text you're NOT going to get what you expect!
>
> Printing on Linux is still a lot like how Fred Flintstone drove to work, feet through the floorboards! In order to achieve superior results you are going to have to feel the pebbles beneath your feet. You WILL have to do some grunt work, and burn up a LOT of shoe leather in the process as well.
>
> Sure things are a little better today than they were back in the bad old days of LPRng and editing your printcap file but not by much! Whenever I setup a printer on Linux it still takes me some time to completely tweak it to get maximum benefits from the hardware (lately I've just been printing in Windows myself due to a variety of circumstances). Personally I prefer how it used to be over how it is today, it was more robust and cut and dried as to what needed to be done. Made the user take some note of the entire process as well.
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> So in conclusion if you want to print on Linux understand how filters work, and how to work with filters as well, how the print spooler works, each step in the complicated dance that has to happen to get a job through the system. When you're done the ends just might justify the means.
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CUPS-block-diagram.svg
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> The word of the topic is gestalt. Without this concept Linux printing will be frustrating at best. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Good luck!
>
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