NOTE: This is planned to be the last development release prior to alpha for the next stable line, and it contains a number of major enhancements. Please test this thoroughly!

Gimp-Print 4.3.24, released November 21, 2003, is a development release of this package. Like all development releases, this version is considered unstable and should only be used by those individuals tolerant of the likelihood of problems. Individuals desiring a stable release of Gimp-Print should use the latest 4.2 release.

Gimp-Print is a suite of printer drivers that may be used with most common UNIX print spooling systems, including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others. These drivers provide high quality printing for UNIX (including Macintosh OS X 10.2 and newer) and Linux systems that in many cases equal to or better than proprietary vendor-supplied drivers, and can be used for many of the most demanding printing tasks.

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

The Print plugin for the Gimp requires the Gimp 1.2 (later versions of the Gimp are not supported). You may need to install a package named "gimp-devel" or the like on many distributions.

The CUPS driver requires CUPS 1.1.15 or higher. You may need to install a package named "cups-devel" or the like on many distributions. We strongly recommend using CUPS with Gimp-Print as a general-purpose printing solution.

We do not currently recommend using Foomatic, as the Foomatic data generator included with Gimp-Print offers very limited capabilities. This will be fixed in a future release. The Foomatic data will work with either Foomatic 2.x or 3.x. Foomatic 3.x has additional capabilities that this package detects and takes advantage of.

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

Users of Macintosh OS X 10.2 and above can use this package, as the printing system is based on CUPS, which is supported by Gimp-print. Note that Macintosh OS X 10.0 and 10.1 (including 10.1.5) cannot use this package. A precompiled OS X package should be available shortly after the release of this package.

Please read the README file for full instructions on installing this package.

Gimp-Print 4.3.24 contains the following major changes over Gimp-Print 4.3.23:

1) Additional dither algorithms based on EvenTone dithering have been added that show considerable promise as far as improving smoothness.

The first variation is called Hybrid EvenTone. This dither algorithm perturbs the dot positions slightly to break up some patterning seen in standard EvenTone dithering in solid regions of pale tones. This very slightly reduces the smoothness of texture in exchange for largely eliminating this undesirable patterning. This algorithm is also expected to be more resistant to microbanding effects.

The second variation is called UniTone. This dither algorithm calculates the placement of all dots (except for yellow) using a single EvenTone pass, not just all of the dots of one color. This technique improves the quality when multiple inks must be mixed, such as when color inks are used to produce gray. It does so by ensuring that all dots are equally spaced. Typically when printing neutral tones with EvenTone dithering the cyan, magenta, and yellow dots are positioned very close to each other, even though the individual cyan dots are well-positioned. This causes the groups of dots to appear to be single, large dots. UniTone dithering evens out the spacing between all dots, producing a smoother texture.

UniTone dithering works best at improving output when the drops are already very small, which is usually at high resolutions. With these small drops, the eye has difficulty distinguishing the color of the individual drops, so their color tends to be distinguished primarily by their darkness. While cyan ink is lighter than black ink and magenta ink is lighter than cyan ink, these differences are not overwhelming and hence the eye does not perceive a difference between them. With large drops, the eye perceives the color of the individual drops, and small spots dominated by one ink become apparent.

As noted above, UniTone dithers yellow separately. This is because the yellow ink is much lighter than any other ink, and the positions occupied by yellow drops appear as holes, reducing the quality of the print. Even light cyan and light magenta inks appear to be significantly darker than yellow.

Experiments conducted to date suggest that UniTone works very well on the Stylus C80 at high resolutions, when the printer is using 3 picolitre drops. On the Stylus Photo EX, at 1440x720 DPI, using 8 picolitre drops, quality is improved significantly when printing in normal 6-color mode but quality is slightly worse in 4-color mode, as the drops are apparent. At 720 DPI (using 12 picolitre drops), quality is improved in 6-color mode but degraded significantly in 4-color mode.

UniTone only functions when printing with more than one ink; when printing black ink only, it becomes standard EvenTone dithering.

Finally, a Hybrid UniTone dither algorithm is provided, combining the principles of both of the above.

2) The package now works properly under OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) and 10.3 (Panther). A bug that prevented printing from applications from working properly (821992) has been fixed. The specific problem was due to the fact that CUPS by default sets the input slot (media source) to Autoselect; this was not recognized correctly by the driver. The current behavior is to treat the Autoselect option as the printer default. This also resolves bug 627266.

3) The CUPS driver has been renamed rastertogimpprint.4.3, and the PPD generation program is now named cups-genppd.4.3. This permits installation of multiple versions of Gimp-Print on a system (currently a 4.2 and a 4.3 version). In the future, the CUPS programs will be suffixed by the major and minor version numbers.

4) The CUPS driver now enforces that the PPD file must match the exact version of Gimp-Print installed on the system. Therefore, when installing the CUPS driver it is essential to upgrade your PPD files, either by means of Configure Printer or by means of the cups-genppdupdate.4.3 script supplied with Gimp-Print. Failure to upgrade the PPD files causes the Gimp-Print driver to not run, printing a diagnostic message to the log. This is being done to eliminate a common source of error that can yield unpredictable results or difficult-to-diagnose errors.

5) The Epson Stylus Color 600, 800, 850, 1520, and 3000 should now print correctly in grayscale/monochrome mode.

6) Preliminary support for the Epson Stylus Photo R300 and PM-G700, PM-D750, and PM-G800. These printers are not tuned and quality is likely to be poor. The Stylus Photo R300, PM-G700, and PM-D750 drivers likely work; the PM-G800 driver may or may not work.

7) Direct printing to CD's is now supported experimentally on the Epson Stylus Photo 900, 950, 960, 2100, 2200, R300, and the PM-950C. To use this, select the Print To CD media source (input slot) and either CD - 5 inch or CD - 3 inch media size. This is currently not tuned, so it will require some experimentation to derive correct ink levels. Most likely, the density setting should be reduced somewhat, as the surface of the CD's probably cannot absorb very much ink.

The CUPS PPD files do not presently enforce the restriction on media size. However, selecting a different media size will cause the job to error out early, during parameter verification.

8) The Epson Stylus Photo 2100/2200 now supports 1440x1440 DPI printing. This mode only barely deposits enough ink to fill the page on most papers. However, it prints as fast as 1440x720 DPI (although the calculation time is longer) and in some cases offers better quality than both 1440x720 and 2880x1440 DPI.

Experiments have determined that this printer is very sensitive to the choice of dither algorithm, unidirectional vs. bidirectional printing, resolution, and weave pattern. In general, it appears that this printer often prints better quality in bidirectional mode than unidirectional. The Staggered weave pattern in combination with Hybrid EvenTone dithering may also yield better results; Ordered dithering often yields good results, too.

We recommend that you experiment with settings to identify the settings that work best for you.