ghostscript needs patch for KRGB printing

[Lee Colleton]

when printing in colour mode on HP printers black text is printed using three coloured inks. this is noticable when one of the colour cartridges is low and black texts comes out coloured.

KRGB has been enabled in HPIJS 1.6 [1] but it needs a patch to ghostscript. there is a patch for the gpl ghostscript [2], but ubuntu seems to use the esp branch

[1]http://www.math.ias.edu/doc/hpijs-1.6/hpijs_readme.html#Updates
[2]http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=687907

there is a debian bug http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354232

old description

HP PSC 1210 Printer Malfunction (HPIJS at fault?)

I've recently upgraded to Breezy and as reward for my troubles my
printer has gone screwy. The hpijs driver now appears to treat black
text as either green or blue (and sometimes yellow). Coloured text
doesn't work in a predictiable manner either.

HP PSC 1210 Printer detected automatically during add.
Worked fine with 5.04

On the print test page:
Black comes out green
Red appears green then yellow
Green comes out as blue
Blue doesn't print properly (skips lines)

This has been cross tested on two computers running Breezy with similar results.

Scanning and copying works perfectly well so I'm sure the printer
itself isn't at fault. I've tried fresh print cartridges as well with
no luck.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

Please could you check, that this is the case with a new installation as well
(i.e. try the recent live CD)?

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i have a similar problem with a HP PSC 1315 (its set as a 1310 in printer settings).

black test is coming out as purple. unless the driver is set to grayscale.

the colour cartridge is nearly empty, so i suspect it is atempting to print black by laying yellow cyan and magenta on top of each other.

would it be considered a bug that the driver prints black in this way?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Hello!

Glad everyone are speaking up because I wanted to make ubuntu my home too. It is a really great distro, but this bug is so bad.

I have even tried the latest dapper using the live Cd. Issues like the poster said and as I said: https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/27002

My report seems to been marked a duplicate why?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Ok I see this poster posted a bit before.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

micky i marked it as a duplicate because the two bugs seem the same issue. it helps the developers fix problems efficiently, ie stop to devs each trying to fix the problem without communicating.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

this could possibly be fixed with KRGB support. this was introduced in HPIJS 1.6 and needs a patch to ghostscript. there are some details http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=367140

i am slightly confused by all the version numbers so i am not sure if this is included in breezy or dapper.

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Tygier,

1. It is not included in Dapper flight 5 good thing for the live cdś. Iĺl maybe play around in ram with patching to test. Or wait for the next release beta round.

Is it possible for the ghostscript to cause an all around failure between apps? What am trying to say is that users of the said model all are seeing this ¨green¨ thing. Both in most /all ? gnome and kde apps. It is also in debian have tried it.

Well, does seem reasonable in the sense that it uses one common ground for printing.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I think this is fixed in gs-esp_8.15.1.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3. Could you please try that and let us know. Thanks.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I think this is fixed in gs-gpl_8.15-4ubuntu3. Could you please try that (you will probably have to mess with the alternatives to get things to use gs-gpl) and let us know. Thanks.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I think that the change to gs-gpl/gs-esp should be sufficient, because I think that hpijs already has support for KRGB and will start using the corresponding support from gs-gpl/gs-esp when it is available.

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Sure just noticed this post will try to test it. Going to bootup ubuntu. Of course my "printer" does not represent the whole printer line of hp's affected. Anyone else with hp's please chip in too with your revisions.

Thanks Devs on any case
<Crossed fingers> that it indeed is fixed.

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Hello again, no go,

I am testing the patch using the live cd Dapper test6.

Let me know if anything done wrong please correct me if so. Thanks.

1. I have run Synaptic to upgrade to: 8.15.1.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3 (dapper)

2. Downloaded GGV and told it to use gs-esp interpreter.

3. Opened a ps file and pressed print and output to my Hp Deskjet-3650 printer. Output is still printing green for the black color. if any steps missed let me know.

If any other program you know that may benefit to test let me know.

How about others with same or similiar revisions ? _____.

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Also same results with gs-gpl : gs-gpl_8.15-4ubuntu3. Again, unless doing something wrong does not seem to works.
Thanks

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

Apparently I'm wrong then and some change to hpijs is still required ?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Would not know for sure but thus far on this side:

gs-eps
gs-gpl
gs-afls

All seem not to be working with this bug. Perhaps someone needs to contact hpijs @.sf.net?? to see what is going on? They seem the ones that made these drastic changes. What do you think?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

I contacted hp, wonder what they will say pointed them here.

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Hp got back to me, not sure if the email was "private". To sum it all up they should contact me they said. When they can do something. In the meantime I am months without a working hp printer. Could ubuntu / Kubuntu devs do something?

This is a serious bug again can not emphasize enough. Whoever introduced it does not seem ubuntu / kubuntu as few other distros have them. You see esp for students this is a bad bug. I personally have to do my electronics course frustrated. If anyone thinks this is all about me: World does not revolve around me I know that. But I am not alone that is frustrated. Just speaking out again aginst this bug. I am from my own experience using a compaq rebranded lexmark not native windows printer in linux. It does not align the cartridge. Ending up the lines unreadable as chewed up.

So "2" printers 1 is not working with the green bug the other one is printing but is seriously flawed. It is a nightmare, I am sorry for sounding off the top. But it has been many months now and the linux printing support is terrible. "Hp" printer most models are not typical windows printers. When it started to print green it was the worst thing that could happen. Since the "color" ink is nearly gone it does not switch to pure black. Seems it never used black to start with. Anyhow, rather then this being a rant please, pretty please, do something. Goodness if only I knew line by line coding.

Unfortuntly my knowledge is nothing in coding. Really would chip in instead of complaining here! But? what to do? who will work on this? this can't let be sitting collecting dust. We are talking about a very important piece of device. It is not an optional addon for many people.

Can Ubuntu "creator" get involved in this?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

When I meant ubuntu creator I meant someone from the top making noise. So this gets fixed faster.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Does this problem still occur with current Edgy (try with a live CD if you do not want to install)?

[Mickey (michael.z)]

Specifically downloaded and burned the newest version. Am right now booted in the live-cd. Unfortunately wish could bring happy news but the problem is still the same. Perhaps this time the ink dried out while waiting but the ink status showed ink 40% before. Did not print on this printer anymore. In the future although this brand shows as supported. It seems "HP" does not care. But am open to trying and getting another round of ink when can afford to.

In the meantime any other users that could fill us in? That is what the ubuntu maintainers are trying to do. If it now works for you specifically this bug creator?

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

my friend has a HP PSC 1315, which was printing black text as purple when printing was set to colour.

i visited again and with an up to date dapper, the issue seems to have gone away.

[Greguti (greguti)]

Hi, I own an HP 3420. CUPS running well, afaik. The pilot used is HPIJS, with Edgy Eft updated from a fresh new Dapper Drake.

When I print a document with OpenOffice, it's ok. But with other softwares, it's always a mess. Two examples:

- trying to print a JPG photograph with GThumb, I get a whole A4 sheet painted with black ink (that's a real nightmare!)...

- trying to print pages from the web, using Firefox, or an e-mail received in Thunderbird, I end up with the text printed in a very small size, in something like 60% of the surface of the sheet, and some parts of the text is not printed at all (but the specified size of the sheet is A4)

Finally, I found a workaround: First, I print the source into a pdf file, then I can open this pdf file with evince and print it. It works well, but it's so boring!

These troubles with my printer are a real drawback for me. I used to print a lot of documents under Windows with that same printer and it went smoothly. I'm even considerint re-installing a Windows partition on my PC just in order to be able to print my documents and images flawlessly :-(

I can provide technical informations if you give me commands and advices in order to do so.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Greguti, the problems you are reporting seem to be problems of the applications (as you can work around them by using other applications). Please post separate bug reports for each application (GThumb, Mozilla).

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

In Feisty we have ESP GhostScript 8.15.3 now, this version contains the newest KRGB patches/fixes. Please try with Feisty (live CD) and report here, especially if you get bad results on Edgy.