Printing: customizing PPDs, or finding the right forum to ask

[Stewart C. Russell]

Hi,

I have an Epson WorkForce WF-7520 AIO. It's really good: excellent
built-in duplex *large format* scanner with ADF, CIFS network storage,
giant paper bins, photo quality printing up to 330×482 mm, only slightly
expensive print cartridges…

It has a problem with Linux, though. As long as you're only ever
printing to Letter or A4 paper, you'd never know. As soon as you try to
print to Ledger paper (aka US B, Tabloid, 11×17") however, you're stuck:

 · if you use the “full feature” driver which allows you to select paper
trays, it won't print larger than Letter. The best you'll get is a
Letter sized print in the corner of a Ledger page.

 · if you use the “reduced” ESC-P/R driver, you can choose US B paper,
but you can't choose the input tray. So you get about half of your
printout truncated on a piece of Letter paper.

I've had no success in modifying the PPDs for either driver (and it
amazed me that we've kept using that format for more than 20 years). The
open source drivers from Epson come with no support, and no contact
e-mails for the authors.

The linuxprinting.org forums went away with the move to the Linux
Foundation. Ask Ubuntu is (as seems usual) spectacularly unhelpful. CUPS
support seems to have mutated into “We are very happy with the scraps
thrown to us by our masters at Apple”.

Would anyone be able to advise where one might get useful advice on
Linux printing issues, please?

cheers,
 Stewart
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