[GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2020-06-01 9:23 a.m., Peter King via talk wrote:
> 
> Brother advertises "PostScript 3 Emulation" which I thought was code for
> using Ghostscript or whatever.

I just checked: the Brother MFC-L2750DW I have *does* claim to have 
BR-Script3 and PCL6, but IPP doesn't need to use it. CUPS will usually 
convert PostScript to PDF in the print process anyway, so BR-Script3 
doesn't add anything.

Your Lexmark claims to support IPP. This will only work if you're 
talking to it over a network. Direct USB connection brings problems. 
*Some* IPP printers support IPP over USB, and the ippusbxd or ipp-usb 
daemons enable it. I don't know if this is supported by your printer.

Can you find your printer via IPP? Try:

     $ ippfind
     ipp://BRWD89C6730425A.local:631/ipp/print

I get that from my Brother printer. To find what formats your printer 
supports, try ipptool with the URL returned above and one of the system 
test scripts:

     $ ipptool -vt ipp://BRWD89C6730425A.local:631/ipp/print 
get-printer-attributes.test | grep document-format-supported
             document-format-supported (1setOf mimeMediaType) = 
application/octet-stream,image/urf,image/pwg-raster

So I see my printer only accepts the two CUPS/IPP raster formats. That's 
fine: better to do the rasterization inside a fast desktop than rely on 
some PS/PDF RIP of unknown capability in your printer.

It looks like cups 2.3.3-1 for Arch includes ippfind and ipptool, and 
requires/includes Avahi for printer discovery.

I wish I could help more. Printing now is genuinely "forget everything". 
It's not like I'm accepting lower-quality printing with IPP, either.

cheers,
  Stewart