Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of ModifyingPPD

Timestamp:

Dec 18, 2006, 9:00:33 AM (17 years ago)

Author:

psmedley

Comment:

--

ModifyingPPD

@@ +1 @@
+Paul,
+
+After running pin.exe 60 or 70 times, writing my own PPDs, & learning
+far more about this stuff than I ever wanted to know, I can now get
+perfectly printed pages on my Epson Stylus C40UX.
+
+As it turns out, only a few minor changes were needed to get the PPD
+from your package (stp-escp2-c40ux.5.0.ppd.gz) to work.  Perhaps the
+following will be of use to you or Bart or whomever:
+
+1- The divide-by-zero trap is caused by this stuff in the PPDs:
+
+ *DefaultResolution:    None
+ *Resolution None/Automatic:    ""
+
+The "*Resolution" keyword _must_ be followed by a numeric value (e.g.
+360x360).  Using 'None' sets dots-per-inch to zero, causing a trap
+when the driver tries to do some scaling operation.  Changing
+"*DefaultResolution"" to one of the other values listed & eliminating
+the "*Resolution None" line fixes the issue.
+
+Fixing this causes a non-fatal conflict.  For many printers, CUPS uses
+its "*StpQuality" keyword to set DPI.  Forcing *Resolution to be valid
+(because the IBM driver demands it) causes whatever value *StpQuality
+set previously to be overridden.  These two entries will have to be
+reconciled (knowing what "/cupsCompression" & "/cupsRowFeed" do would
+help).
+
+2- The entries which control DPI *have* to be set identically in the
+driver's Properties pages & in the "Set Printer Options" web page.
+If they're not, the output is scaled incorrectly.  I had the driver
+using 8pt type but it was printing out at 24pt.  Eventually I found
+that the driver was set to 360x360 while CUPS itself was set to
+360x120.
+
+3- "*LanguageEncoding: UTF-8" is a non-issue - at least for Western
+European languages.  AFAICT, the first 256 characters of UTF-8 are
+IsoLatin1.  Change this manually & ppdenc works great.  In any case,
+the only non-CP850 character I found in my PPD (0xD7) translated to a
+multiplication sign.  It's used in some of the paper sizes (e.g. 4x6).
+I used a search & replace to change them to lowercase 'x' before
+running ppdenc.  The only difference between before & after was
+"IsoLatin1" became "OS2-850".
+
+4- On the 'Output' page of the driver's job properties, "Use printer
+device fonts" has to be unchecked (at least when printing plain-text
+files).  If not, I get this error: "[Job 38] /invalidfont in findfont".
+OS/2's lpd then reports that it got an invalid size for the file it
+received and aborts the print job.  The primary downside to this is
+that the PS files get monstrously large because they require the font
+to be embedded.
+
+5- PPD keywords that don't have any Postscript code associated with
+them are not emitted by the driver, e.g.
+  *StpInkType CMYK/CMYK Colour: ""
+Consequently, most of the entries on the 'Features' page of the
+driver properties have no effect whatsoever (and 80% of each PPD is
+inert filler).
+
+6- My PPD had 60 forms listed but the driver can only handle 30
+entries - the rest are ignored.
+
+Rich Walsh