HPLIP 3.9.2 reduces page size & prints black vertical stripes alongside when Output Mode "grayscale" is chosen

[Renard Voß]

When i choose the greyscale output mode of HPLIP 3.9.8 under ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (e.g. using Acrobat Reader or HPLIP under Print Settings -> General) my A4 documents are not printed as A4 documents but their size get reduced to A6 (a quarter of the A4 size) and the printer (in my case a HP DeskJet 845C) prints black vertical stripes / lines on the right side of the paper.

This happens with all applications except Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Difficult to explain where is printed what, but easy to understand by having a look at a scan of a print out and at my settings:

Print out:

http://picfront.org/d/2ihkNGba/Bug-Scan.jpg
or directly: http://www13.picfront.org/picture/2ihkNGba/img/Bug-Scan.jpg

Settings:

http://picfront.org/d/dv9oWnz2z0p/HPLIP-Settings.png
or directly: http://www13.picfront.org/picture/dv9oWnz2z0p/img/HPLIP-Settings.png

If I change the output mode back to "color" everything is fine, except that often I don't want to print colours.

[Shakil (shakilk-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi,

I can understand that you are facing problem while printing in grayscale, from your first statement it seems that the problem is with Acrobat reader as well as HPLIP. However in your second statement you mentioned that "This happens with all applications except Adobe Acrobat Reader.". Can you please clarify it once again.

I would also request you to try printing a text file and gray scale being selected, and let me know the result. Is it happening with all types of documents or only few.

In the meantime can you send me cups log by enabling the debug mode.
Please use the below link to enable the logging:
http://hplipopensource.com/node/225

Also send me the log for hp-check -t

Regards

[Renard Voß (renardvoss)]

Hello Shakil!

In fact, my first sentence is a little confusing. It's not a problem related to Acrobat Reader (A.R.), but initially I thought, that if you change the colour settings of HPLIP within A.R. (for example), HPLIP keeps these settings for all other apps.

Now that I tried everything again, I found out that this is not true and that this was not the cause of the problem. But this does not mean that there is no problem. It's only more complicated.

Ready?

If you change to grey scale within HPILP one of the few programs which causes the problem directly is Word via Wine; obviously because Word/Wine uses the settings of HPLIP and you won't notice that, since there is no possibility to change these setting inside the printer dialogue of Word.

Another program which respects the settings of HPLIP is Mozilla Firefox. If you change to grey scale inside HPLIP, Firefox will print grey scale causing the problem. If you tell Firefox to print in colours, it will do that correctly, but if you try to print another page out of Firefox it will have changed already back to grey scale. With GEdit it's exactly the same: I printed a file with the word "test" with the same result/problem.

A.R. and OpenOffice, instead, seem to ignore the settings made via the HPLIP tray icon. Colour is chosen by default or, if not, you can choose "color" within the printer dialogue of A.R. and/or OpenOffice and both apps will print fine in colours and will keep these settings. But if you change there to grey scale you can cause the problem even with A.R. and OpenOffice.

However, if you change to greyscale, there's a workaround to avoid the problem: If you tell HPLIP or the program you are printing with, that only the black cartridge is installed, it will print grey scale correctly (I didn't discover this last time!).

After I found all this I tried to do what you ask me to do:

First I made the hp-check-log (see below).

Than I opened http://hplipopensource.com/node/225 and followed the instructions, but with no success.

Here is what i have done in a Terminal:

  rennie@Riese:~$ # /etc/init.d/cups restart
  rennie@Riese:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
  [sudo] password for rennie:
  sudo: /etc/init.d/cupsys: command not found
  rennie@Riese:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
  sudo: /etc/init.d/cupsys: command not found
  rennie@Riese:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
  sudo: /etc/init.d/cupsys: command not found
  rennie@Riese:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart
   * Restarting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd [ OK ]
  rennie@Riese:~$ tail -f /var/log/cups/error_log
  E [08/Oct/2009:13:53:41 +0200] Resume-Printer: Unauthorized

After that the terminal window hangs. Do you now what's the problem?

============================================================================================================
HP CHECK LOG
============================================================================================================

hp-check[31644]: info: :
Initializing. Please wait...
Ubuntu

9.04

Scheduler wird ausgeführt

1.3.9

Linux Riese 2.6.31-02063101-generic #02063101 SMP Tue Sep 29 15:51:28 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

hp-check[31644...

[yashi (yashi-email)]

my printer (hp officejet pro L7590) has the same problem when printing in "draft" mode; my version of hplip is 3.9.8 on kubuntu 9.04

in my terminal the command hp-check -t returns

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.9.8)
Dependency/Version Check Utility ver. 14.3

Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

Note: hp-check can be run in three modes:
1. Compile-time check mode (-c or --compile): Use this mode before compiling the HPLIP
supplied tarball (.tar.gz or .run) to determine if the proper dependencies are installed to
successfully compile HPLIP.
2. Run-time check mode (-r or --run): Use this mode to determine if a distro supplied package
(.deb, .rpm, etc) or an already built HPLIP supplied tarball has the proper dependencies
installed to successfully run.
3. Both compile- and run-time check mode (-b or --both) (Default): This mode will check both
of the above cases (both compile- and run-time dependencies).

Saving output in log file: hp-check.log

Initializing. Please wait...

---------------
| SYSTEM INFO |
---------------

Basic system information:
Linux muletto 2.6.28-15-generic #52-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 9 10:49:34 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Distribution:
ubuntu 9.04

Checking Python version...
OK, version 2.6.2 installed

Checking PyQt 4.x version...
OK, version 4.4.4 installed.

Checking for CUPS...
Status: la stampa programmata è in esecuzione
Version: 1.3.9
error_log is set to level: warn

Checking for dbus/python-dbus...
dbus daemon is running.
python-dbus version: 0.83.0

------------------------------------
| COMPILE AND RUNTIME DEPENDENCIES |
------------------------------------

note: To check for compile-time only dependencies, re-run hp-check with the -c parameter (ie, hp-check -c).
note: To check for run-time only dependencies, re-run hp-check with the -r parameter (ie, hp-check -r).

Checking for dependency: CUPS - Common Unix Printing System...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: CUPS DDK - CUPS driver development kit...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: CUPS devel- Common Unix Printing System development files...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: CUPS image - CUPS image development files...
OK, found. ...

[Shakil (shakilk-deactivatedaccount)]

When you are printing through hp-print or through application like Adobe acrobat, do you see under the print >page setup>scale as 100 percent or 26 percent. If it is 26 then make it 100. Also can do do a cleaning of the cartridge by opening "HP Device Manager" >Action >Clean cartridges.

If everthing fails then I would suggest you to download and reinstall hplip from http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html by selecting the correct printer model. However before doing that open the cups web interface http://localhost:631/ and remove all printers and install hplip from the above link and then add the printers.

[Renard Voß (renardvoss)]

Before opening the bug report I reinstalled hplip several times, using the version from the ubuntu repos, the Version for my HP 845C and the Version for my fathers j6410.

This didn't change anything.

And there is no problem with the scaling. It remains at 100% in "all" apps when I change to grey scale.

Sometimes I already used the cartridge cleaning function, but it didn't have any influence on the problem.

So what?

Regards Renard

[Shakil (shakilk-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi Renard,

I tried reproducing your problem and it seems that the conflict only arises if you select installed cartridge as color and print in gray scale. You need to select installed inks as "BLACK + Color" and you can have gray scale printing.

As far as the firefox changing back to gray-scale from color since HP-device manager is set to print in gray-scale depends on the application whether it respects the hplip settings or not. HP don't have control on that and you might need to contact firefox or application support in that respect.

Thanks for supporting HPLIP.

[Renard Voß (renardvoss)]

Hi Shakil!

I thank you for your reply, but I'm sure that the problem is not related to or caused by Firefox.

I could cause the problem with every application when I chose "grey scale" and "BLACK + Color". Only if I've chosen "gray scale" & "black" OR "color" & "black + color" it worked.

I wrote this in other word already above: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/444474/comments/2

On Oct. 29th I'll switch to ubuntu 9.10 and then we'll see if the problem persists or if it's gone.

Regards Renard

[Shakil (shakilk-deactivatedaccount)]

Renard,

When I wrote BLACK, it actually is black. Can you confirm if choosing gray scale & "Black + Color" worked? As your second statement seems to be saying it worked but first statement(in second paragraph) means it didn't worked.

Choosing the installed "Black + Color" is the best option as it leave to the printer to best decide the right ink even if printing in gray scale.
This problem would be fixed in coming release of HPLIP, however at this moment we can't assure which exact version or release it might be fixed.

Thanks for your support to HPLIP.

Regards

[Renard Voß (renardvoss)]

I don't know what you mean with "statement" (post?) but even without knowing this I can confirm that:

Grey scale & "Black + Color" doesn't work.

If I want to print grey scale I have to tell hplip to use only the black cartridge.

That's what I called a workaround for the problem (see my second post).

Thus, choosing "Black + Color" is not the best option (especially because I often choose grey scale when I want to print coloured documents in grey scale to save ink).

[Shakil (shakilk-deactivatedaccount)]

Sorry to inform that your model Deskjet 845C has reached the end of support life, meaning the HPLIP solution is considered “As-is”. No further HPLIP code changes will be implemented by HP.
However you can send me your PPD file from /etc/cups/ppd for further analysis, but we can't guarantee that we can help you fully as this product has reached end of life.

[stuckey (jhstuckey)]

I am also having this problem.

I first time I used greyscale I didn't have any problems, but the second time I tried to use it I got output like the original poster described.

When I'm printing out in color it doesn't seem to be a problem. If there isn't a fix for this, could someone suggest a work-around?

Thanks,
James

[stuckey (jhstuckey)]

Oh, I probably should included the model of the printer: HP CM1312MFP

[Renard Voß (renardvoss)]

Hello James!

Thank you for the specifying the name of your printer, which is relatively new and won't have reached "the end of support life".

The work around you asked for, I described above (...if you change to greyscale, there's a workaround to avoid the problem: If you tell HPLIP or the program you are printing with, that only the black cartridge is installed, it will print grey scale correctly...)

Please send your PPD file from /etc/cups/ppd to Shakil.

Bye James

============================================

Hello Shakil!

I know that my printer is very old, but as you can see Yasni's hp officejet pro L7590 and stuckey's/James' HP CM1312MFP are affected, too.

And those printers are still on the market.

Here is my HP 845C PPD file: http://yourfiles.to/?d=F147E77D20

Bye Shakil

[stuckey (jhstuckey)]

Here's my PPD file:

*PPD-Adobe: "4.3"
*%%%% PPD file for HP Color LaserJet cm1312 MFP with CUPS.
*%%%% Created by the CUPS PPD Compiler CUPS v1.4.1.
*% (c) 2008 Copyright Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
*FormatVersion: "4.3"
*FileVersion: "hpcups 3.9.8"
*LanguageVersion: English
*LanguageEncoding: ISOLatin1
*PCFileName: "hp-color_laserjet_cm1312_mfp-pcl3.ppd"
*Product: "(HP Color LaserJet cm1312 Multifunction Printer)"
*Manufacturer: "HP"
*ModelName: "HP Color LaserJet cm1312 MFP"
*ShortNickName: "HP Color LaserJet cm1312 MFP"
*NickName: "HP Color LaserJet cm1312 MFP pcl3, hpcups 3.9.8"
*PSVersion: "(3010.000) 0"
*LanguageLevel: "3"
*ColorDevice: True
*DefaultColorSpace: RGB
*FileSystem: False
*Throughput: "1"
*LandscapeOrientation: Plus90
*TTRasterizer: Type42
*% Driver-defined attributes...
*cupsEvenDuplex: True
*cupsModelName: "hp color LaserJet"
*1284DeviceID: "MFG:HP;MDL:hp color laserjet cm1312 mfp;DES:hp color
laserjet cm1312 mfp;"
*cupsVersion: 1.4
*cupsModelNumber: 0
*cupsManualCopies: True
*cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-raster 0 hpcups"
*cupsLanguages: "en"
*UIConstraints: *Duplex *OptionDuplex False
*UIConstraints: *OptionDuplex False *Duplex
*OpenUI *PageSize/Media Size: PickOne
*OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *PageSize
*DefaultPageSize: Letter
*PageSize Photo/Photo 4x6in: "<</PageSize[288 432]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize A6/A6 105x148mm: "<</PageSize[297.36 419.76]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Hagaki/Hagaki 100x148mm: "<</PageSize[284 411]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Card3x5/Index Card 3x5in: "<</PageSize [216 360]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvChou4/#4 Japanese Envelope 90x205mm: "<</PageSize[254.88
581.04]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvMonarch/Monarch Envelope 3.875x7.5in: "<</PageSize[279
540]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Photo5x7/Photo 5x7in: "<</PageSize[360 504]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize A5/A5 148x210mm: "<</PageSize[419.76 595.44]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Card5x8/Index Card 5x8in: "<</PageSize[360 576]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Oufuku/Oufuku-Hagaki 148x200mm: "<</PageSize[420
558]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Env10/#10 Envelope 4.12x9.5in: "<</PageSize[297
684]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvA2/A2 Envelope 4.37x5.75in: "<</PageSize[314.64
414]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvC6/C6 Envelope 114x162mm: "<</PageSize[323.28
459.36]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvDL/DL Envelope 110x220mm: "<</PageSize[311.76
623.52]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize EnvChou3/#3 Japanese Envelope 120x235mm: "<</PageSize[339.84
666]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Letter/Letter 8.5x11in: "<</PageSize[612 792]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize A4/A4 210x297mm: "<</PageSize[595.44 841.68]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize Legal/Legal 8.5x14in: "<</PageSize[612 1008]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize B5/B5 176x250mm: "<</PageSize[498.96 708.48]/ImagingBBox
null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize JB5/JB5 182x257mm: "<</PageSize[516.24 728.64]/ImagingBBox
null>>setp...