pxlcolor problem when printing characters after color change

[jhoechtl]

Binary package hint: ghostscript

Kubuntu 9.10
CUPS 1.4.1
ghostscript: gs -v
GPL Ghostscript 8.70 (2009-07-31)
Copyright (C) 2009 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

When I print documents from OpenOffice on my laserprinter Samsung CLP-610ND, which uses pxlcolor as recommended driver, very often a character following a color change does either not print, or is in a wrong color. I assume it is pxlcolor related and not an OpenOffice issue, as an exported PDF gets printed wrong too.

The file I attached triggers the problem. In this document when the color changes, the character following the color change is not printed. So the first line printed comes out as

Tel er Tel er es en Mes er

instead of

Teller Teller essen Messer

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

As this Bug is still new and no reply I want to stress that I have to switch back to Windows as using the printer is impossible. This is a very serious bug.

Any Info as how to raise attention, probably on the core ghostscript developers?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Please post a bug report at http://bugs.ghostscript.com/. Post a link to your bug report here.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Note that http://bugs.ghostscript.com/ has died and it will take some days until a replacement is set up.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

http://bugs.ghostscript.com/ is up and running again. Please report the problem there and post a link here. Thanks.

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

Done. See it with meaningful attachments as
http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691082

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Bug in Samsung's printer firmware, HP printers print the same files just fine. See upstream Ghostscript bug report (link in previous comment).

To get your Samsung printer printing correctly, try the SpliX driver. If the SpliX driver is not offered for your printer in system-config-printer, try a similar model, like CLP-600, CLP-510, CLP-500 ... If these are also not listed, download the SpliX driver from the OpenPrinting web site (http://www.openprinting.org/, download the DEB package for your architecture).

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

jhoechtl, please report your results about using your printer with SpliX here.

If SpliX does not work, try also whether your printer works as a "Generic PCL 5c printer" or a "Generic Postscript printer".

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

I followed three paths:

* First I followed the hints on http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=341621&highlight=splix and installed the Samsung Unified Print Driver
* I tried Foomatic/foo2qpdl
* I tried SPL-C

When I issued a apt-get install splix I was very astonished to see it already installed. As such I don't know wheather SPL-C is the splix driver or the Samsung Unified Print Driver. When using SPL-C and printig large documents a process rastertosamsung is playing together with gs (and eating almost 50% of my dual cores).

I observerd:

* The color print quality of Foomatic/foo2qpdl is aceptable; The are some artefacts, but at least color gradients print correctly; However pure colors have some "stripes" in filled areas, which all-in-all result in a bad quality for eg. photos. I did not tried ICM profiles but by default a color correction would be neccessary as all colors have a somewhat wrong tint.

* SPL-C comes out very good! There's not much to say, very brilliant colors, sensible CMYK-RGB values and no artefacts of any kind. A mild color correction would be good for RGB grayscales (it's a light bluish gray) but otherwise perfect

(* pxlcolor [PCL-XL] is pointless to try with this printer as I consider the firmware buggy)

Please tell me if by using SPL-C I use Splix or the Samsung Unified Print Driver.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

SPL-C is the manufacturer-supplied driver (Samsung Unified Print Driver). Therefore you obtained the best quality with this driver.

You did not test SpliX. You do not need to download SpliX from OpenPrinting, the version supplied by Ubuntu already supports your printer, and it supports it explicitly, you can directly choose the CLP-610 in system-config-printer.

Please test SpliX, as I am planning to make it the recommended driver to work around your printer's firmware bug. Therefore I want to know in which position is SpliX' print quality compared to the other drivers.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

To test SpliX, please choose as your printer model the CLP-610, without "ND".

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Fixed driver assignment of the CLP-610ND upstream in the BZR repository of foomatic-db. The corrections will soon appear on the OpenPrinting web site.

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

I certainly would try the splix driver, yet I don't know how to choose it.

That's the output of
root@deneb:~# apt-get install splix
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
splix is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@deneb:~#

So it seams to be installed. But whatever model of Samsung printer I choose, I never get the opportunity to choose a 'splix' driver, either in the KDE printer settings or directly in Cups, localhost:631.

However, pstoqpdl is in /usr/lib/cups/filter and /usr/share/ppd/splix/samsung is also present. However, there also is a folder /usr/share/ppd/samsung, a symlink to ../cups/model/samsung/ a folder created by the Unified Samsung Print Driver.

Maybe the Samsung Unified Print Driver is hiding / masking splix?????

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

So I tell you step by step how you get to it:

Start system-config-printer (System->Administration->Printing) and right-click your printer. Click on "Properties" in the pop-up menu. On the "Settings" page of the dialog click the "Change" button in the "Make and Model" line. After some seconds another dialog will show with a list of manufacturers at the bottom. Choose "Samsung", click on "Forward", and then the "CLP-610" (without "ND"). On the right, choose "Samsung CLP-610, SpliX V. 2.0.0 [en]".

The Samsung Unified Print Driver does not mask any other drivers. In general, one driver cannot mask another.

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

Till, i consider myself a moderately advanced Linux user (since 1997), thank you anyway for your step-by-step explanations. Kubuntu looks somewhat different, but regardless wheather I use the Kubuntu tools or Cups directly via Add Printer or Modiy printer in the Cups management console on localhost:631 --- I do not have any splix driver installed. For any Samsung printer model.

I already did apt-get remove splix and apt-get install splix, no such driver (the install is without error messages).

This was a clean install of Kubuntu Karmic Koala (no dist-upgrade), I'am on AMD64 btw.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package splix - 2.0.0-2ubuntu3

---------------
splix (2.0.0-2ubuntu3) lucid; urgency=low

  * debian/local/ppd/samsung/clp610nd.ppd,
    debian/local/ppd/samsung/clp610ndfr.ppd,
    debian/local/ppd/samsung/clp610ndpt.ppd, debian/rules: Added PPDs for
    the Samsung CLP-610ND (LP: #505423, LP: #510832).
 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:25:49 +0100

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

system-config-printer must be modified to prioritize SpliX if a printer is supported by this driver, as this driver is more specialized for the appropriate printers.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package foomatic-db - 20100215-0ubuntu1

---------------
foomatic-db (20100215-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
     - New printer models supported: Kyocera CS-C2525E, CS-C3225E, CS-C3232E,
       CS-C4035E, CS 250ci, CS 300ci, CS 400ci, CS 500ci, FS-C5100DN,
       FS-C5200DN, FS-C5300DN, FS-C5350DN, FS-C5400DN, FS-C8100DN+, KM-C2525E,
       KM-C3225E, KM-C3232E, KM-C4035E, TASKalfa 250ci, 300ci, 400ci,
       HP LaserJet 1022n, 1022nw, P4014, P4015, P2055dn,
       Lexmark C540, C543, C544, C546, C734, C736, C780, C782, C930, C935,
       E260, E260d, E260dn, E360d, E360dn, E460dn, E460dw, E462dtn, EG460dn,
       T650, T652, T654, T656, TG654, W850, X203n, X204n, X264dn, X363dn,
       X364dn, X364dw, X463de, X464de, X466de, X466dte, X466dwe, X543, X544,
       X546, X651de, X652de, X654de, X656de, X658de, X734de, X736de, X738de,
       X860de, X862de, X864de, X940e, X945e
     - Canon LBP-3360 needs "hpijs-pcl5e" instead of "pxlmono" as driver
       (LP: #504841).
     - Added "n" and "nw" version of HP LaserJet 1022, to make printer setup
       tools set them up with "foo2zjs" (LP: #250872).
     - Samsung CLP-610ND needs "splix" instead of "pxlcolor" as driver
       (LP: #505423, LP: #510832).
     - Added license info to the PostScript PPDs from KONICA MINOLTA.
     - Lexmark's PostScript PPDs are free software and therefore included in
       the foomatic-db upstream source package now.
     - Generic PCL 6/PCL XL printer works also with the "hpijs-pcl5c" driver.
     - Oki B6300 works as PCL-XL printer.
     - Corrected OrderDependency numbers for the JCL options so that the JCL
       code is definitely inserted in the correct order (LP: #442451).
     - Removed "*cupsFilter" line for Apple from the ready-made PPDs, it causes
       problems with some printers on Mac OS X.
     - Renamed printer entries: HP Color LaserJet 8550GN -> 8550, HP LaserJet
       2055 -> P2055d.
     - Removed HP's PostScript PPD files as they are supplied and maintained
       in HPLIP.
     - Major XML clean-up.
     - Updated and completed the documentation of the Foomatic XML format in
       the README file.
  * debian/patches/remove-redundant-hp-ppds.patch,
    debian/patches/kyocera-ppd-jcl-fix.patch: Removed, applied upstream.
  * debian/patches/bjc600-bjc800.patch: Regenerated.
  * debian/control: Added "Provides: foomatic-db-hpijs" (LP: #491287).
 -- Till Kampeter <email address hidden> Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:37:31 +0100

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

After moving to Kubuntu 10.04 (clean install) I immediately tried the splix driver to print out the document available at
www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/a3gencolorhigh.pdf
After 8 minutes or so (moderately fast laptop), the CPU was consumed by a raster process and gs but the document failed to print.

I reverted to the vendor supplied drivers, printout worked immediately.

Once again, the vendor supplied printer driver masks for Samsung models it supports any other printer driver away. I do not have Splix nor pxlmono any more to choose for this Samsung printe.

[jhoechtl (johann-hoechtl)]

This bug may be closed. The originally described bug was caused by faulty printer firmware and the course of this report changed to a different topic which seems also solved.