verifying PPD file
We recently picked up a new printer (a Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 8200DP) that came with some ppd files, among other useless drivers. As I'm setting up our print server, I feel like it'd be nice to have the correct driver working with that printer. Correct drivers make the macs and other cups setups happy. Unfortunately, the mac and PC (and the tarball of linux drivers from the website) all don't work right. I go to add the printer using KDE's control panel on the print server, and it rejects the ppd as being "not in the correct format". It accepted other Xerox PPD files, and this one looks about the same. I tried converting line endings to Mac/Unix/DOS, but that didn't help anything with either of the PPDs I tried. I gave the file a cursory glance, but it looks "similar" to other working files, and I don't know enough about raw postscript to actually tell what's wrong, if anything. Does anyone know of a utility that can verify PPD files and explain any errors found inside, or something else that might help me out? The web interface to CUPS doesn't allow arbitrary drivers, and I'm not really sure where to put this file to get it to show up in the list anyway. I'm getting along fine now using the Phaser 850DP description (we have an 850DP elsewhere in the building), but it'd be nice to have the *right* driver on the machines that use that type of driver. :) Thanks. --Danny
* Danny Sauer
We recently picked up a new printer (a Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 8200DP) that came with some ppd files, among other useless drivers. As I'm setting up our print server, I feel like it'd be nice to have the correct driver working with that printer. Correct drivers make the macs and other cups setups happy.
http://linuxprinting.org *is* your friend. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/photos
Patrick wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] verifying PPD file' on Mon, Aug 23 at 17:16:
* Danny Sauer
[08-23-04 17:12]: We recently picked up a new printer (a Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 8200DP) that came with some ppd files, among other useless drivers. As I'm setting up our print server, I feel like it'd be nice to have the correct driver working with that printer. Correct drivers make the macs and other cups setups happy.
http://linuxprinting.org *is* your friend.
It would be if I needed to find drivers, but I've got drivers. I just need them to work. :) --Danny, checking out alternative drivers now...
Hello, On Aug 23 17:07 Danny Sauer wrote (shortened):
Does anyone know of a utility that can verify PPD files and explain any errors found inside
/usr/bin/cupstestppd is included since SuSE Linux 8.2 You also need the Adobe PPD specification because cupstestppd shows the section in this spec - see http://www.cups.org/idd.html#2_2 for an URL. Also have a look at http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/11/jsmeix_print-info-for-manufacturers.ht... "PostScript Printers" ... The CUPS utility "cupstestppd" ... Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX AG, Maxfeldstrasse 5 Mail: jsmeix@suse.de 90409 Nuernberg, Germany WWW: http://www.suse.de/
Johannes wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] verifying PPD file' on Tue, Aug 24 at 03:24:
On Aug 23 17:07 Danny Sauer wrote (shortened):
Does anyone know of a utility that can verify PPD files and explain any errors found inside
/usr/bin/cupstestppd is included since SuSE Linux 8.2
You also need the Adobe PPD specification because cupstestppd shows the section in this spec - see http://www.cups.org/idd.html#2_2 for an URL.
Also have a look at http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/11/jsmeix_print-info-for-manufacturers.ht... "PostScript Printers" ... The CUPS utility "cupstestppd" ...
Hooray! It tells me the line number of the error, and the place in the docs that explains that error. That's cool (now, if only the KDE utility would pass *that* info along rather than just a return code). :) Time to drop the people at Xerox a line noting that their ppd is broken. :( --Danny, happy
Danny wrote regarding '[SLE] verifying PPD file' on Mon, Aug 23 at 17:12: For teh sake of completeness: [...]
Does anyone know of a utility that can verify PPD files and explain any errors found inside, or something else that might help me out? The web [...]
Looks like this can also be done at http://www.cups.org/testppd.php - where a more descriptive error message is given than the cupstestppd command on my SuSE 9.1 system... :) --Danny, who found that the problem was extra whitespace. Argh. What a "robust" design, where whitespace breaks things. :(
* Danny Sauer
Looks like this can also be done at http://www.cups.org/testppd.php - where a more descriptive error message is given than the cupstestppd command on my SuSE 9.1 system... :)
--Danny, who found that the problem was extra whitespace. Argh. What a "robust" design, where whitespace breaks things. :(
Did you try the ppd from linuxprinting.org. It should have worked 'out of the box'. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/photos
Patrick wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] verifying PPD file' on Tue, Aug 24 at 16:29:
* Danny Sauer
[08-24-04 10:42]: Looks like this can also be done at http://www.cups.org/testppd.php - where a more descriptive error message is given than the cupstestppd command on my SuSE 9.1 system... :)
--Danny, who found that the problem was extra whitespace. Argh. What a "robust" design, where whitespace breaks things. :(
Did you try the ppd from linuxprinting.org. It should have worked 'out of the box'.
Nope, I just removed the extra whitespace char and then let Xerox know, since it probably also breaks cups on OS X, which is a slightly larger market than "a few linux geeks". The rep said that "a spec must've changed", since their old ppd files all have the space, but the new files don't have the space. I didn't point out that I have older printers with older Xerox drivers that don't, in fact, have the space... :) Anyway, with the "single char that broke the camel's back" removed, it works real nicely. Wax printers are neat. --Danny
participants (3)
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Danny Sauer
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Johannes Meixner
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Patrick Shanahan