Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Trying to set up HP printer with foo2zjs

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 03:12:06PM +0000, James wrote:

Sorry, reply took a while. Got lots of different stuff going on right now.

> > > cups + hplip is pretty robust.
>
> > Mostly because I want a minimal system. I have cups already which KDE can
> > use, I don’t need (or want) another tool that does the same job and that
> > has a lot of GUI stuff that my printer doesn’t support anyway (scanners  >
> and such).
> […]
> So you have compiled these before, with a minimum of flags activated?

I had been using it for years on my machines that use the printer. I can’t
remember ever having looked at its use flags, though.

> The know the number of flags, the smaller the binaries..... (as you know).
>
> > Furthermore, it installs a tool which I don’t need and pollutes my tray
> > and which has no off-switch. Tries to deactivate it in the past had not
> > succeeded (as I said, non-technical reasons).
>
> Ah, kde frustration? Been there, left that constant_change environment.
> Personally, I would not use kde as part of my printing solution.

Because you don’t use KDE (which is in no way meant as a negative). While I
find the possibility to print from anywhere including the commandline neat
(I was a Windows-only noob until my early 20s), I never actually needed it.

> Cups + > hplip work fine without kde involvement.

But as a KDE user, this time I *want* to use KDE, because I get a consistent
print interface in all applications (oh well, 95 % of my printouts are PDFs
from Okular).
Of course I can still use KDE’s solution even with hplip installed. But
there is still the hp tool in the tray for the exact same thing, wasting
space.
My mind just works in strange ways and is simply bothered by that fact.
Plus, I dislike vendor-specific software on principle. :o)

> > Also, with every update it wants to download the proprietary plugin anew
> > (which I had trouble with in the past b/c I did offline updates) or else
> > no  printo worko.
>
> OK, so mask the offending codes?

I don’t quite follow. The printer needs a binary firmware uploaded each time
it is connected to the computer. This comes as a binary “plugin” which is
downloaded by hp-setup. And for some reason this plugin file is only
compatible with a single hplip version, hence the new download after each
update.
The plugin file is actually a shellscript that has a tarball embedded in
base64. This tar contains the actual install files and a python2 script
which does not advertise its version in the shebang. I just tested it on my
old netbook which already had hplip isntalled. If I have python 3 active,
all I get at some point is "Plugin install failed" during printer setup. So
I switch to python2, rinse and repeat and then the installation works.

Incidentally when installing hplip, the ebuild does lots of "Fixing shebang"
on a lot of python files (I had to reinstall b/c a useflag was missing).

> Did you have a ppd file setup via cups? (/etc/cups/ppd) YOu mave have a copy
> of the old ppd config file in the cups/ppd dir?

Right now I have a single PPD in that location which originated from
foo2zjs. Obviously it comes from setting up the printer in cpus, b/c it is
named after the printer’s cups name.

> What is your computer-printer interface? (usb/eth/par/ser/rf)?

USB. -- Made in mid-2002, the printer itself has a parallel port, but came
with (and only with) a USB converter cable so it actually hooks up to the
computer over USB.

> Do have sys-apps/hwids installed?

Yep.

> On a side note, you may want to try lxqt-0.8.0 in a few weeks, when it
> is released.....

I had a look at it a few months ago but found it yet unusable due to missing
functionality (e.g. couldn’t find where to set number of virtual desktops).
-- 
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