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

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 09:25:46AM -0400, Stewart C. Russell wrote:
> 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.

Which full feature driver are you trying?

>  · 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 don't think the plain ESC-P/R language has a paper tray command.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

> 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 PPD just controls what options exist.  How the driver deals with
them is the real question.

> 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?

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists