[scribus] Printing to Phaser 7400DN

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:03:19 -0600
Frank Cox <melville.theatre at gmail.com> dijo:

> On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:32:56 -0400
> John Culleton wrote:
> 
> > KPDF?    It uses Cups which allows for even and odd selection.  And 
> > I select the paper tray on my Ricoh Laser by punching buttons on 
> > the printer itself.  Not sexy but it works. 
> 
> Unfortunately, no.  It (and evince) both rely on poppler.

Actually, I can't even find Kpdf any more. In the latest Ubuntu it
seems to have morphed into Okular. I have tried printing the PDF with
Okular and I still can't get correct orientation and size. I have also
tried Evince. In the Evince print dialog box there is not even an
option to select portrait v. landscape. That is a major problem in
Linux - the printer has many software-selectable options, but the print
dialog boxes for many applications do not display the options.

I also have Adobe Reader 8.1 installed on Linux, and 9.1 as well. Still
cannot get the correct orientation and size. Furthermore, Adobe Reader
cannot find Tray 1 - regardless of which tray I tell it to print from
it prints from Tray 2. 

I have also tried exporting to PS and sending the file to the Phaser
7400DN with the command line. This finally got me landscape, but the
image is printed as though there is a 6" margin on the top and left.
Using lpoptions does not list all the commands that I need in order to
access the necessary features of the printer. E.g., I cannot find the
lpr syntax for manually setting margins to zero.

Selecting features in the Printer's Properties window also fails to get
me correct output, although some things did help. For example, setting
the default orientation to landscape, duplexing to off, page size to
tabloid extra and input tray to Tray 1 means that I don't have to
select those options in an application's print dialog box. But even
having done that Adobe Reader insists on pulling the paper from Tray 2.

I can't tell if the problems are in CUPS, the applications or the
printer driver (PPD file). And bear in mind that this printer has a
zillion options, many of which have confusing names or lack of
documentation. For example, you can select whether to print on plain
paper, thin card stock, thick card stock or extra thick card stock (in
addition to various other paper thicknesses). I can't find anywhere
what those features mean in terms of grams per square meter. And yes,
it is important to set it correctly for the paper you are using, else
the toner won't fuse properly.

I'll keep poking at it, but there are so many options that it may take
the rest of my life to hit on the right combination. :(  I keep hoping
I can find a Linux user who actually owns one of these printers.