No, I don't want PostScript

[Hoary]

I'm using a steam-era Hewlett-Packard Laserjet IIIP printer. (Since I've bought it, I've bought alternatives. They died on me. The IIIP just keeps chugging along.)

It's not a PostScript printer. On the front is marked "Resolution Enhancement PCL5" (I think that was the New Big Thing back then).

I installed it in the KDE GUI fashion: no smart-alecky stuff. (I'm an iggernant newbie and I know I'm an iggernant newbie.) I found the IIIP among what seemed a squillion "HP" options. There were various flavors of IIIP, and I was careful not to choose PostScript. I chose PCL5. There were various options even for that; none meant anything to me so I chose the recommended one.

I tried to print a page. The print-out starts:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%BoundingBox: (atend)
and a bit more, and it wants to follow this with empty page after empty page.

The description, provided automatically, is "HP LaserJet 3P w/ PCL5". No mention of PostScript in that.

What stupid mistake might I have made?

[askrieger]

Re: No, I don't want PostScript

What stupid mistake might I have made?

I'd call your mistakes ignorant rather than stupid. So the first thing to do is to alleviate your ignorance. All printing in Linux (except for that of text only files with text only printers) is done through Postscript. If your printer does not have native support for postcript, as your's does not, You need to use a postscript to native graphics (PCL5 in your case) converter. The application that does this is called "hpijs" and it is available for (K)Ubnitu. If it has not been installed automagically, you willl have to install it yourself using apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, or (if you must) adept. Once hpijs is installed, you have to configure the printer driver which is called the Common Unix Printing System, CUPS, for short. I don't know what options you chose when you tried to set up your printer in the KDE System Settings, but if it wasn't CUPS, you made a mistake.

You definitely made another mistake. You didn't look up your printer at LinuxPrinting.org. This is the source of all printing knowledge for Linux. They have entries for both the 3P with Postscript and the 3P with PCL5 (that's where the URL will take you). Armed with knowledge, you should have a MUCH better chance of getting your printer going.

Congratulations for still having a working LJ-3P. It was a sad day when my LJ-2P died. I turned around and got an LJ-2200, but I doubt that it'll last for 15 years.

[Hoary]

Re: No, I don't want PostScript

I'm just back from a (delightfully computer-free) vacation. Thank you for the valiant attempt at the alleviation of iggernance, Al.

I think I understand what you're saying.

hpijs is installed.

With my root superpowers, I've just now looked in the relevant KDE module. My printer is described by KDE as "HP LaserJet 3P w/ PCL5", so at some level it "knows" that PCL5 is what's wanted. "Print system currently used" is "CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System)". Sounds good so far.

The print menus that I get when attempting to print from Konqueror and OOo (the only two programs I've tried for this purpose) look different from each other. For Konqueror, the comment is that it's a "Local Raw Printer" (whatever that may mean); the "Properties" button seems irrelevant here, and there's no mention of CUPS. For OOo, it's an "SGENPRT" (ditto), and the "Properties" button also seems irrelevant (other than saying that it's "manual feed", which it certainly is not: unless I stop it, it autofeeds page after page in its misunderstanding of PostScript), and again there's no mention of CUPS.

Maybe I'd better just zap this from the list of printers and reinstall it. Meanwhile I'm laboriously saving OOo .odt files to MS Turd format, copying them onto a flash memory card, moving them to a 'Doze machine three floors down via sneakernet -- oh well, at least I end up consuming their laser cartridges rather than my own.

Meanwhile, your link to linuxprinting.org is interesting but seems mostly about using the printer well rather than getting it to work at all, which ought to be simple (and a couple of years back was very simple for me using what's now an ancient version of SuSE). It also says:

Widely available this workhorse just keeps going and going. It also uses about the cheapest toner available. Remanufactured toner is about $25, and Xerox sells new units for about $50.

In the part of the world where I happen to live, this is only half true. Remanufactured toner is I think unavailable (there are so few of these printers that it's not worth the effort to market the stuff), and the company to which HP has hived off this minor part of its business charges the same exorbitant amount that HP always did (though it's a lot easier to deal with than HP used to be).

[Hoary]

Re: No, I don't want PostScript

I seem to be stubbing my toe against KDE Print's "Add Printer Wizard". ("We hope you'll enjoy this tool!" Not today I'm afraid.)

Yes, I was using CUPS (or so I was told). But my PS-incapable printer was still being served PS.

So today, using KDE Print, I removed the printer (which, strangely, didn't require my password), clicked "Administrator Mode" and provided my password (no error message) and started to install afresh. I'm given five options: "HP LaserJet 3P w/ PCL5 (Foomatic +XXX)", where XXXX is the variable. I believe that last time I chose "ljet4", because it was marked "recommended"; this time, however, no matter what I choose I'm told:

"Unable to load the requested driver:

"Unable to create the Foomatic driver [[name]]. Either that driver does not exist, or you don't have the required permissions to perform that operation."

I cancel. I can't redo "Administrator Mode" as the button is grayed out (presumably because I'm already in administator mode).

All right then: I close KDE Print and start over. Now the "Administrator Mode" button is visible. I provide the password (no error message) and proceed. Same non-result.

A couple of years ago, it was easy to get this printer working with SuSE 8.2. Three weeks or so ago, it was easy to install the wrong driver (or make some other mistake) with Kubuntu. Today I can't even install the wrong driver. De-evolution or something.

[askrieger]

Re: No, I don't want PostScript

Are you sure that you didn't uninstall the hpijs package along the way? Other than that, I'm not sure what to say. The only time I've ever had trouble with an HP printer was when I was trying to print from my laptop to an LJ-6P that was attached to another computer and port 631 was closed. Other than that, it's been my experience that HP printers "just work".

[Hoary]

Re: No, I don't want PostScript

Are you sure that you didn't uninstall the hpijs package along the way?

Adept tells me that it's installed.

Let's try again. I see that I'm using CUPS via "localhost:631". (No, I can't pretend I know what either means.) First, I hit "Administrator Mode" and give it my password. There's no explicit acknowledgement that I'm now in administrator mode, but the button grays out so I suppose I'm in it. Add printer/class. The wizard pops up ("We hope you'll enjoy this tool!": well, I did three weeks ago). Backend selection: local printer. Local port selection: Parallel LPT#1 shows up; I select that (and read "parallel:/dev/lp0"). Printer model selection, loading (delay). I click neither "PostScript printer" (because it isn't) nor "Raw printer" (because it certainly does need a driver. "HEWLETT-PACKARD" contains almost nothing; "HP" is where all the good stuff is listed. I choose "LaserJet 3P w/ PCL5". I'm given a selection of five drivers; I choose "gutenprint-ijs 5.0" more or less at random. I hit "Next".

Same old error message.

Sudden brainwave: Maybe when I installed the (wrong) driver on a close-to-zero-threads-running system. Let's imagine for five minutes that Kubuntu is as stupid as, say, MS-DOS 2.11 or Windows Me. (Just imagine, OK? No hard feelings please!) Perhaps installing a new printer requires scads of memory; perhaps every program that has a print option needs to be closed. (Seems silly but why not try?) So I saved the first half of this message to a text file via Kate, closed that, closed Konqueror, closed everything I could see to close, and went through the whole process all over again, most certainly remembering to be in Administrator Mode.

Same old error message.

The most bog-standard printer I could think of was an HPLJ2 so I tried installing the driver for that. Same old error message.