Gimp-Print 4.2.2, released September 12, 2002, is a stable release in the Gimp-Print 4.2 series. This release primarily offers bug fixes and support for all Epson Stylus printers announced since Gimp-Print 4.2.1.

This software includes the Print plug-in for the Gimp, and GhostScript and CUPS drivers, including Foomatic data.

The Gimp Print plugin requires the Gimp 1.2.

The CUPS driver requires CUPS 1.1.9 or higher. 1.1.14 or above is highly recommended, as certain translation-related bugs are fixed and it is possible to print true CMYK.

The Ghostscript driver requires GNU Ghostscript 5.10, 5.50, 6.51, or any later GNU Ghostscript release based on 6.51 (e. g. 6.52). It may also be used with GNU Ghostscript 7.05, or with ESP Ghostscript 7.05.

The IJS GhostScript plugin driver requires GNU Ghostscript 6.53 or later, ESP Ghostscript 7.05 or later, or APFL GhostScript 7.04 or later.

We recommend that Macintosh OS X (10.2 or later; this package will not work with any 10.0 or 10.1 release) users download the precompiled installer package from http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net rather than attempt to build this package from source, as using the installer is much simpler. This package will be available shortly after this announcement. We further recommend that Macintosh OS X users install ESP GhostScript, to permit printing from applications (such as most Adobe applications) that generate PostScript rather than PDF output. Directions for that are also available at http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net.

Please read the README file and full release notes (see http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net) for full instructions on building and installing this package.

Gimp-Print 4.2.2 contains the following major changes over Gimp-Print 4.2.1:

* Major Bugs Fixed:

1) (bug 565092) A Gimp-print driver crash on some systems is fixed. Inspection with a debugger would indicate that the crash was in a routine named `stp_vasprintf'. Whether the driver crashed or not depended upon the precise system software installed.

2) (bug 592093) On certain systems primarily in European countries (where the locale was set to a non-US value, such as French, German, or even UK English), the IJS-based Ghostscript driver did not set certain parameters properly. The most obvious effect was that the page size was set incorrectly.

3) (bug 510185) On certain Epson printer models (primarily the Epson Stylus Color 740 and newer) hosted on some Windows systems, the last page of jobs was printed incompletely; anywhere between a fraction of an inch and half a page would not be printed. This did not affect all printer models, or all Windows-hosted printers. Whether this happened depended upon the exact printer model, the version of Windows, and the driver features selected on the Windows host (in particular, the status monitor and/or bidirectional communication).

4) (bug 594637) The driver for the Lexmark Z52 crashed in certain circumstances.

5) (bug 600249) On all printers requiring a right margin greater than zero (which is most printers), the native CUPS driver printed a right margin twice as wide as the margin required by the printer. This resulted in the output being squeezed slightly.

6) (bug 599505) When using the Postscript PS2 output in the GIMP Print plugin to print to a CUPS-hosted printer, options selected in the PPD file were ignored.

7) (bug 598341) On certain systems, the GIMP Print plugin did not save the printer defaults correctly. This happened on systems where the `lpstat -p -d' command (used to retrieve the list of printers available on the system) produces more than one line listing each printer.

8) (bug 554149) The CUPS driver did not install correctly on certain commercial UNIX systems, in particular most Solaris systems.

9) (bug 581446) The driver did not print correctly at certain very low resolutions on certain Epson printers in black and white. This prevented fast draft printing from working correctly.

10) (bug 565091) The IJS driver failed to print extremely large images (typically very long banners on large format printers).

* New Functionality:

1) Apple Macintosh OS 10.2 ("Jaguar") is fully supported as of this release.

2) The default optimization level with gcc is now -O2 rather than -O. This improves performance somewhat.

3) German, Portuguese, and Spanish translations have been added.

4) Quad tone grayscale inks, such as the Piezography (TM) inks, are now supported for most Epson Stylus printers. This is not tuned for a particular inkset at this time, so the results will not be of top quality yet. This capability should be considered beta.

5) Many new Epson Stylus printers are supported. Please see the complete list of printers at the bottom of these release notes.

* Quality Improvements:

1) A new dither algorithm, EvenTone, has been added. This algorithm produces superior results for photographs and other continuous-tone images, but in its current form it may not be as well suited for solid color images and line art. This algorithm should be considered beta.

* Exceptions and Workarounds:

1) On Macintosh OS X, it is not possible to print directly from applications that generate PostScript, such as most Adobe applications. This is because OS X does not include the "rastertops" filter required for CUPS to print PostScript files. The workaround is to generate a Print Preview, and to print from that (Print Preview generates a PDF, which OS X is able to print).

This limitation is not specific to Gimp-Print. Please check the Gimp-Print web site (http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net) for updates and possible fixes.

2) The Epson PM-950C (Japanese version of the Stylus Photo 950/960) does not use the additional dark yellow ink available on that printer.

3) Certain older Epson Stylus printers (the Stylus Color 3000 is known; some or all of the 600, 800, 850, and 1520 may also suffer this problem; the Stylus Photo 700 and EX do *not*) print much too dark at 1440x720 DPI. This was reported too late in the cycle to fix for this release. The best workaround is to print at 720 DPI, which will yield only a minor reduction in print quality.

The following bugs have been fixed in Gimp-Print 4.2.2:

510185 Incomplete print to Windows-hosted printers 534059 print dialog - wrong and confusing label (.no translation) 554149 solaris x86 install error
565091 IJS driver fails on very large images 565092 Crash in stp_vasprintf on some systems 581446 Improper printing at very low resolution (Epson) 586960 Gimp Print plugin installs incorrectly on some systems 592093 IJS driver sets page size incorrectly in some non-US locales 594637 Lexmark Z52 driver crash
597964 Epson 660 wrong margins
598341 get_system_printers() problem with duplicate entries 599505 PS2 printing from GIMP broken with CUPS 600249 gimp-print output too narrow in CUPS

The following bugs are open against Gimp-Print 4.2.2:

538097 Poor quality printing on Canon s400 549677 Incorrect scaling on Canon BJC-1000 581168 BJC 250 just spits out pages
596538 Cutting on Epson Stylus Photo 925 does not work 599029 Fast printing not supported on Epson 950, 960 602933 Poor quality on Canon S800
603702 HP LaserJet 5L print is too light

From: "Branko Collin"
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 02:11:18 +0200

On 12 Sep 2002, at 19:32, Robert L Krawitz wrote:

> Gimp-Print 4.2.2, released September 12, 2002, is a stable release in > the Gimp-Print 4.2 series. This release primarily offers bug fixes > and support for all Epson Stylus printers announced since Gimp-Print > 4.2.1.

Just an aside, but I noticed that a decision by Apple (to use CUPS for OS X.2 instead of their own printing system, if I understood it correctly) seems to have put the name GIMP-Print firmly on the map in the Macintosh world. Is that true? Does that mean extra work for you, or just more useful bug reports?

Generally extra work, in the form of "Please support such-and-such a printer!" feature requests. Also a lot more excitement in general -- speaking for myself, I *never* imagined the project would go mainstream in this way. There are a few Apple people helping out a lot with the support, which makes life a lot easier (most of us can pretty much ignore the Mac-specific stuff).

When the rest of the CUPS support is there, the printer support requests will hopefully die down a bit, since other drivers will pick up some of the slack.