Printing black-and-white 

Newsgroups:  gmane.comp.printing.cups.general
Date:        Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:42:52 -0500

How can I do black-and-white-only printing for even color sources?

Most pdf filre are colored, but acroread doesn't has the option to let me choose to print black-and-white-only.

I tried the following in acroread printer command configuration, but still, acroread prints color outputs.

/usr/bin/lpr -P my_printer -o saturation=0

Please help.

Can I give my printer an alias for black-and-white-only printing, and use that whenever I want to print black-and-white?

thanks

Printing black-and-white 

>>If your printer is a native PostScript printer and it's PPD
>>provides options to select the color model,
>
> No, it is a inkjet printer driven by Gutenprint:
>
> Description: Epson Stylus CX1500
> Location: USB Printer #1
> Make and Model: Epson Stylus CX1500 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0-rc3
> Printer State: idle, accepting jobs, published.
> Device URI: usb://EPSON/Stylus%20CX1500
>
>>then change the default color model defined in the PPD.
>
> I don't know about PPD, and I hope that I don't need to touch any system
> files. Changing the default color model defined in the PPD might not alows
> me to print color documents as color and/or black-and-white, as I wish.
>
> That's why I want give my printer an alias for black-and-white-only
> printing, and use that whenever I want to print black-and-white, and use
> the real printer name for color printing.

You should have a file /etc/cups/ppd/xxxx.ppd, where xxxx is the name you have configured your printer with. Please post (an URL to) this PPD.

Helge

Printing black-and-white 

Well, the PPD offers to select one of two color models: CMYK color and Grayscale:

*OpenUI *ColorModel/Output Mode: PickOne
*OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *ColorModel
*DefaultColorModel: CMYK
*ColorModel CMYK/Color: "<</cupsColorOrder 1/cupsColorSpace 8/cupsCompression 1>>setpagedevice"
*ColorModel Gray/Grayscale: "<</cupsColorOrder 0/cupsColorSpace 3/cupsCompression 1>>setpagedevice"
*CloseUI: *ColorModel

Thus, if your printer is configured properly, you simply could (either by using the lpadmin command or the "configure printer" from the web admin) set the default color model to Grayscale. You could even edit your printer's PPD "by hand" by replacing

*DefaultColorModel: CMYK

by

*DefaultColorModel: Gray

And you may easily set up two print queues - one configured for color printing and the other for b/w printing as indicated above - pointing to the same physical printer.

Helge Blischke

Cups ` Gutenprint ` Epson Stylus Printer = problem 

Newsgroups:  gmane.comp.printing.cups.bugs
Date:        Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:48:14 -0500
> - lp -o saturation=0 does not work.
>
> A color saturation of 0 should "produces a black-and-white print", but I
> find my printer still prints in color.

Please RTFM. The saturation (and hue) options only affect image printing (not PostScript).

> Moreover I think the
> "-o brightness=150" does not work either.
>
>  lp -o saturation=0 -o brightness=150 /usr/share/cups/data/testprint.ps

The brightness option *should* work, but with the sample drivers the effect might not be all that noticeable…

Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products

How can I add multiple printers quickly ? 

Newsgroups:  gmane.comp.printing.cups.general
Date:        Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:12:41 +0200 (CEST)
> I need to add multiple printers (over 100) on a system quickly instead
> of going through web gui menu.  After adding the printers, I need to
> replicate the all printer information to another system.  Is there a way
> to do this as well, like programmatically or copying over the configs?

Read http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell in particular the section about "Command-line Tools".

Johannes Meixner

How can I add multiple printers quickly ? 

> To replicate the printer information just copy the necessary files to
> the other system.

No! This is an efficient way which may lead to a broken CUPS system. To increase efficiency, copy the files while the other cupsd is running and for maximum efficiency also copy files from the spool directory ;-)

Please read http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell "General information on the command-line tools"

Johannes Meixner

CUPS Command-line Tools 

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell#Command-line_Tools

General information on the command-line tools: 

Reason:

The configuration files are not reloaded for every print job. Rather, cupsd keeps much of the information in the main memory and writes information back to the configuration files whenever needed. Exception: /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

After modifications in this configuration file, cupsd must be restarted in order to make it use the modified configuration. See Section "Restarting the CUPS Server" in the "CUPS Software Administrators Manual" http://localhost:631/sam.html#RESTARTING or file:///usr/share/doc/packages/cups/sam.html#RESTARTING.

For example, to set up the same queues on several machines (e.g., for a backup server), do not copy /etc/cups/printers.conf and /etc/cups/ppd/*, but write the respective commands in a script (usually a sequence of lpadmin commands) and run the script on the various machines. In this way, any error messages will be displayed on the respective machines (e.g., if a PPD file is not available on a machine or if a backend is not available or not ready to use). Furthermore with such a script you have something like a log-file of the settings, enabling you to restore the settings by running the script at any time.

Details 

Command-line tools for creating or editing queues:

Use the following command to check what was created:

user@host$ lpstat -a funprinter1000 -p funprinter1000 -v funprinter1000
funprinter1000 accepting requests since Jan 01 00:00
printer funprinter1000 is idle.  enabled since Jan 01 00:00
device for funprinter1000: parallel:/dev/lp0

Alternatively, take a look at /etc/cups/printers.conf:

<Printer funprinter1000>
Info funprinter1000
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

Or query the system with the web front-end: http://localhost:631/printers/funprinter1000

The output has the following syntax:

main-keyword/translation-string: option-keyword option-keyword option-keyword ...

The default setting is marked with an * preceding the "option-keyword".

The syntax is as follows:

lpadmin -p queue -o main-keyword1=option-keyword1 -o main-keyword2=option-keyword2 ...

Do not use lpoptions for this purpose. Refer to the Support Database article "Print Settings with CUPS": SDB:Print Settings with CUPS. Normal users can use lpoptions to save their personal default settings in ~/.lpoptions. More information on this is presented in the same Support Database article.

Command-line tools for daily use 

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell

documented on: 2006.09.07