lexmark 736DN <-> opensuse 11.4 - Where's the driver?

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1

I have a Lexmark 736DN printer (color, 2-sided printing).

With openSUSE 11.3, there was non specific driver to pick during printer installation: I picked up “Lexmark C772dn Foomatic/Postscript” and everything was fine (at least I didn’t notice problems).

With openSUSE 11.4, there’s no such a driver! Even more, the list of drivers for lexmark is a lot, lot shorter than the list present in 11.3. C772dn is not present so i picked up “Lexmark 4076 - CUPS + Gutenprint v5.2.6”: but there is no color option and non double sided printing !

So, what’s up? Maybe I miss a rpm with printer’s drivers (not installed by default)?
Suggestions?

TNX in advance!

Bye.

2

Your Postscript-capable printer is well supported. (I’m not sure why your model is not present in the list though).

Anyway, there is a RPM package available from here:

Driver: Postscript-Lexmark | OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation

Select your model from the list, and download the RPM, then install.

Then proceed to install via your browser:

http://localhost:631/admin

3

TNX Deano_ferrari, we already discussed in another thread about printing and openSUSE 11.4, this is a brief follw-up.

In the mean time I did some more homework and test.

I downloaded from Driver: Postscript-Lexmark | OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation (your link is the same) the file “20110105 (RPM for LSB 3.2)” which is the openprinting-ppds-postscript-lexmark-20110105-1lsb3.2.noarch.rpm, but installing it is useless (maybe I missed something, but i read through the install instructions - Printer Driver Packages | The Linux Foundation -). Searching a little bit more with the rpm installer, I found a packet called “OpenPrintingPPDs”. I installed it and that’s what i was looking for.

There are two drivers for my printer:

  • Lexmark C736 (en, de, es, fr, it, pt, ja, ko, zh_CN, zh_TW, ko)
  • Lexmark C736 Foomatic/Postscript (en)

The first has a lot of options but double sided printing does not work.
The second is simpler but works better (all that I need)

Just a little problem (for both) paper when I print from Firefox, LibreOffice, ecc. is always set to US Letter (instead of A4 as set on the printer): but it’s not a real problem, it works anyway.

THANKS a lot, sorry for posting too quickly (if the first post is considered useless).

Bye, bye.

4

Just a little problem (for both) paper when I print from Firefox, LibreOffice, ecc. is always set to US Letter (instead of A4 as set on the printer): but it’s not a real problem, it works anyway.

Did you set these within the app yet? For firefox, check File>Page Setup. For LibreOffice or OpenOffice, check Format>Page settings. With OpenOffice (assume LibreOffice willbe similar) you can also set a default template page size:

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=1161

5

Well, thanks for your help, looking with a deeper detail, I’m thinking of it as a “non openSUSE” problem (but LibreOffice, and some other application).

  1. all my printers are set to A4 (checked with CUPS web interface and with YAST)
  2. some programs have a a “Format for any printer” setting: this is true for Firefox and GIMP for example. Setting this parameter correctly fixes all.
  3. some programs don’t have such a setting, but they “read” the printer setting: i.e Gwenview, Okular, Kwrite, Konqueror … all KDE programs i believe. They are OK because printers’ settings are OK (my guess)
    4-1. some programs are “different”: i.e Google Chrome. Settings are correct for all my printer, but are wrong if I choose “Print to file” (both pdf, ps, and there’s also svg), here the setting is “US letter” … and I can’t manage to change it (my ignorance?)
    4-2. LibreOffice is even more different (It should be, being a word processor and much much more).
    First of all “Tools->Options–>Language Settings->Languages->Locale setting” is set to Italian (Italy): that’s fine, 'cause we use A4.
    Second, checking in “Format->Page->Page->Paper format->Format”, there is “A4”: fine!
    Third, “File->Print->General->Properties (of a specific printer)” … US letter: oh no! but …
    Fourth, there is also “File->Printer Settings->Properties (of a specific printer)->Paper->Paper size”, I can choose A4 and save. Now, “File->Print->General->Properties (of a specific printer)” is fine. Perfect? No, because if I change again the settings in “File->Printer Settings->Properties (of a specific printer different from the coosen one)->Paper->Paper size”, settings revert to US Letter.

So surely it’s not a driver problem, neither an openSUSE defect. Maybe it’s something I don’t understand or I can’t easily find: may I say there’s something that is too far from “intuitive use”?

Anyway, with a little care, everything can be managed successfully, so it’s not a big bug (just a minor one I/we can live with).

TNX

6

Yes, its a bit of a minefield when not using native KDE apps. With regards to LibreOffice, I think it would be a good idea to contact them about this:

Get Help » LibreOffice

Maybe they can unify the print settings, or recognise the CUPS settings.

4-1. some programs are “different”: i.e Google Chrome. Settings are correct for all my printer, but are wrong if I choose “Print to file” (both pdf, ps, and there’s also svg), here the setting is “US letter” … and I can’t manage to change it (my ignorance?)

Have a look at /etc/papersize file with regards to default paper type too, although I’m not sure what apps use it.

7

Well, good work once more!

LibreOffice reads /etc/papersize file. I changed it to “a4” and what I described about LibreOffice disappeared (fine!). So it’s neither a bug in LibreOffice, it was just a misconfiguration of my system.
[maybe a little bit more of documentation would have helped].

Hoping to be useful (man page here described is not present on my system) I post the “man papersize” output:

papersize(5) - Linux man page
Name
papersize - specify preferred paper size
Synopsys
/etc/papersize
Description
The papersize file is used to specify the preferred paper size to use by available commands and programs generating documents.

The format of this file is extremely simple: whitespace and anything starting with ‘#’ is ignored, and the name of the paper is the first string found; the case in the name of the paper does not import (see CAVEATS section however).
Paper Names
The following names are commonly understood by programs: a3, a4, a5, b5, letter, legal,executive, note and 11x17.

Additional paper names that one may encounter are: a0, a1, a2, a6, a7, a8, a9, a10, b0, b1, b2, b3, b4, tabloid, statement,note, halfletter, halfexecutive, folio, quarto, ledger, archA, archB, archC,archD, archE, flsa, flse, csheet, dsheet, esheet and 10x14.

The value of the papersize file can be overrideen by looking in order at the PAPERSIZE environment variable, then at the contents of the file specified by the PAPERCONF environment variable. If the papersize file does not exist, programs using the paper library default to using letter as a fall-back value
Caveats
This manual page documents the format of the papersize file that is read by the libpaper library. Some programs that read this file do not yet use the library and may have trouble ignoring whitespace and comments in the file; they may also require that the paper names use a specific capitalization.
Documentation
Yves Arrouye <arrouye@debian.org>
See Also
paperconf(1)
paperconfig(8)
Referenced By
defaultpapername(3), paperdone(3), paperinfo(3), tuxpaint(1)

All this is ineffective for Google Chrome.

Bye, bye.

8

Glad to have been of help. :slight_smile: