Cups filters are not bundled with Ubuntu altough the PPD are present
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
foomatic-db (Ubuntu) |
In Progress
|
Medium
|
Unassigned | ||
gutenprint (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
This bug affects at least the intallation of the following printers :
- Lexmark X73
- Brother P-touch QL-550
These printer are correctly recognized by the printer installation Wizard in Ubuntu. The correct driver is automatically selected but then it's not possible to print anything. After activating the logs in foomatic config file you can see that the binary filters are missing (rastertoptch for the Brother and drv_z42 for the lexmark).
I had to find out about this issues for a friend, then find the required source filters, install build-essential, cups-dev and other headers then compile and install the filters. It's rather confusing and not user friendly for non-savy users.
See :
- http://
- http://
- http://
- http://
What version of Ubuntu are you using?
I confirm this using Edgy 20061015.
If you currently set up a printer with gnome-cups-manager, KDE Print Manager or CUPS web interface, e.g. a Minolta MagiColor 2430DL that uses foo2zjs binary driver you are able to do so without problems even if the foo2zjs package is not installed. This is also the case for printer drivers that have no Ubuntu package, e.g. drv_z42 (Lexmark X73). To avoid this I believe we should split up foomatic-db into foomatic- db-gs-builtin and foomatic- db-gs-filter. The package foomatic- db-gs-filter should depend on ALL the binary Ghostscript filter packages available in Ubuntu like foo2zjs, pnm2ppa, ... db-gs-filter that have no Ubuntu package.
We should remove drivers an options from foomatic-
Off course we should have as much drivers as possible packed for Ubuntu, if the driver license allows it. It should be no problem to pack drivers drv_z42 and ptouch for Ubuntu since both seem to have a GPL license.