LPD printing

[shep]

One oddity I found was that though CUPS said it was using the 2170W filter, I didn't find such a ppd

This is a little late. OpenPrinting is a CUPS supported web site that allows searching for *ppd by manufacturer/model. Compatible ppd's are under the advertisements.

For a 2170W.

For the Brother 2270DW, the generated ppd was empty and this was noted in the user comments below. Using this driver

hpijs-pcl5e (driver home page)

HP's HPIJS driver - PPDs for compatible PCL-5e-based non-HP laser printers
Supplier: Hewlett-Packard
License: BSD (free software)

User support: HPLIP support and bug tracking system (voluntary)

Max. rendering resolution: 600x600dpi Only monochrome output Type: IJS
Text: |||||||||| 100 Graphics: |||||||||| 100 System Load: Unknown
Line Art: |||||||||| 100 Photo: |||||||||| 100 Speed: |||||||||| 70
Download: PPD file: View PPD, directly download PPD

Worked perfectly for the 2270DW, including duplex.

[IdOp]

Yeah, openprinting.org saved my bacon too. The .ppd files that came on the CD-ROM with my printer were for PostScript printers, which my printer is not. At first I went to the manufacturer's website and got a .ppd for it there. But this one didn't pass the CUPS' cupstestppd program, and it also didn't work right. Then I dug into the Rube Goldberg machine jggimi referred to and made a kluge to get it working, but wasn't happy with it. Finally I found a good .ppd file on openprinting.org. I am still using CUPS with Linux, and foomatic direct on NetBSD.

[scottro]

I didn't mention that in my overly long and numerous posts in this thread, but at some point, I did create the ppd using openprinting.org. That gave me the same result, failure to print with the filter failed or stopped message, I've forgotten which.

[Oko]

Those PPD files on openprinting.org are generated using foomatic-db. Some people feel nervous about downloading random shit from the Internet when there is a package which actually creates PPD files.

[IdOp]

Originally Posted by Oko

Some people feel nervous about downloading random shit from the Internet ...

It's a valid point. In my case the PPD from openprinting.org was a modification of the pxlmono.ppd that comes with ghostscript. The changes looked reasonable ... adding printer-specific options and such. So I decided to try it, and it worked. Yes, there was a risk vs. cost judgement in there.

[scottro]

My whole interest in this thread came from not being able to print with CUPS in FreeBSD. So.... just for fun and to avoid doing my exercise, I decided to see if CUPS would work with OpenBSD 5.6. Set it up, added the printer through the CUPS gui interface, foomatic-db offering my Brothers HL2170W. Went to print a test page, and it worked without problems.

So, somewhat ironically, CUPS seems to work adequately (again for my VERY simple needs) in OpenBSD for me. I did no testing outside of printing the test page though, which failed in FreeBSD.

[Paianni]

I spent a while trying to get my parents Canon MG3650 working with Foomatic and LPD and then discovered this titbit in the release announcement for Gutenprint 5.2.12:

Note that the Foomatic data generator and the Ghostscript IJS driver have been removed as CUPS support is ubiquitous and Foomatic is not needed with CUPS.

This seems to have drastically reduced the number of Gutenprint printer drivers that can work with LPD, so CUPS is the only option for me.

[jggimi]

Since you've unearthed this ancient thread, I will report that I returned to using CUPS in 2017 or 2018, in order to obtain integration with Gtk applications.

Never say never again.

[fvgit]

Originally Posted by Paianni

This seems to have drastically reduced the number of Gutenprint printer drivers that can work with LPD, so CUPS is the only option for me.

Don't know if this helps, but Foomatic is available as two separate packages in the OpenBSD ports collection: foomatic-db & foomatic-db-engine.