Gutenprint 5.0.0-rc3 is the third (and hopefully final) release candidate for Gutenprint 5.0. It incorporates extensive feedback from earlier release candidates. In addition to the changes listed below, it now features a Macintosh OS X Universal Binary.

The release may be found at

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1537&package_id=143930&release_id=418068

MAJOR CHANGES BETWEEN GUTENPRINT 5.0.0 RELEASE CANDIDATE 2 AND GUTENPRINT 5.0.0 RELEASE CANDIDATE 3:

1) The package now offers explicit support for many more printers. All printers supported by Gutenprint are now listed explicitly rather than via the compatibility list. As a result, CUPS PPD files and Foomatic are now generated for each supported printer.

2) CUPS and Foomatic/IJS now produce correctly dimensioned and positioned output. Previous pre-releases of Gutenprint 5.0 produced incorrectly dimensioned and/or positioned (offset from the correct position) output in certain cases. This happened in the following circumstances:

a) When a printer capable of optional full-bleed or borderless operation was used in full-bleed/borderless mode, the output was stretched to fit the expanded dimensions. The result was that lines of specified lengths were printed slightly longer than desired, and since the vertical and horizontal stretching was normally not identical, the output was distorted slightly.

b) When printing directly to a CD, the output was shrunk horizontally and/or positioned incorrectly by a small amount (typically a few mm).

c) Depending upon the application doing the printing and the printer selected, the output was shifted down and to the right by several mm.

The PPD files and driver have been modified to specify zero borders in all cases when a printer with borderless capability is used. If normal (non-borderless) mode is selected, the border is simply not printed, leaving correct dimensions for everything within the imageable area. However, as a result of this, the driver no longer prints true full bleed (overprinting the edge of the page). The margins are set to zero, and typically there will be very narrow unprinted margins (less than 1 mm) on one or more sides.

Printing to CD's works correctly whether or not full bleed mode is selected.

This change has no effect in the GIMP plugin and in other applications which directly use Gutenprint, as there was never any problem in those contexts.

3) The IJS driver now correctly ejects the last page of a job. Previously it did not always eject the last page with certain Epson printers.

4) The Epson Stylus Photo R800, R1800, R2400, and related printers should now print at full speed in all cases. Previously these printers were extremely slow (about 10 times slower than normal) in many cases.

Related to this, the list of resolutions offered for these printers are slightly different from before. Resolutions above 2880x1440 DPI are no longer offered; instead, resolutions of 2880x1440 high quality and 2880x1440 highest quality are offered. These resolutions use extra passes of the print head to reduce banding. In addition, these resolutions are actually 1440 DPI horizontally and 2880 DPI vertically.

5) The HP DeskJet 690 and other supported PCL printers capable of 6-color photo printing (such as the Apollo P-2100 and Apple Color StyleWriter 4500) no longer result in the driver crashing if black and white output mode was selected. Also, Canon printers capable of 6 or 7 color photo printing no longer result in a crash if black and white output mode is selected.

6) Canon and Lexmark inkjet printers now print if color output mode is selected with a black and white cartridge installed. Previously this was not possible in the GIMP plugin; the CUPS and Foomatic drivers permitted this to be set, but gave a runtime error when a job with these settings was printed. These printers now accept the job and simply print it in black and white.

7) The cleaning and nozzle check functions of escputil now work properly on most printers, and escputil no longer crashes if you type ctrl-D to a command prompt. In addition, the status printed via the status command is now much more readable.

8) The color quality for the Epson R300, R800, R2400, and related printers has been improved.

9) Raw output now works correctly on the Epson R800 and R1800.

10) The Canon driver now handles color and grayscale, and also photo ink cartridges (previously it sometimes handled these incorrectly or even crashed). However, many of these printers still do not print correctly with a photo cartridge installed (the width of the printout is incorrect).

11) The GIMP plugin now displays the thumbnail image correctly in CMY mode (previously it displayed incorrect colors).

12) Experimental support for the Japan-market Epson printers PM-A900, PM-D800, PM-G730, and PX-V630, and preliminary support for the PM-A650, PM-A750, and PM-A890.

13) The definition of the Epson Stylus CX3500, CX3600, CX3650, CX4100, CX4200, CX4500, CX4600, CX4700, CX4800, CX5700, CX5800, CX7700, CX7800, DX4200, DX4250, DX4800, and PX-A650 have been corrected. The DX4800 now works correctly; the color output for all of these printers has been corrected. All of these printers also now print at full speed; they previously printed extremely slowly in many cases.

The list of resolutions is also slightly different from before; the 2880x1440 DPI resolution is no longer offered; instead, resolutions of 1440x1440 high quality and 1440x1440 highest quality are offered. These resolutions use extra passes of the print head to reduce banding.

14) A new option for generating simplified PPD files for CUPS has been added. The --enable-simplified-cups-ppds=yes option to configure allows generating PPD files with only basic options (including only common paper sizes) in addition to the normal, full-featured PPD files; --enable-simplified-cups-ppds=only generates only the simplified PPD files. The -a and -s options to cups-genppd.5.0 may be used manually to do the same thing. This is discussed in the README file.

15) cups-genppdupdate.5.0 has significant enhancements:

* A new option, -N, causes cups-genppdupdate.5.0 to not merge options from the old PPD file into the new file. This can be used to reset a CUPS+Gutenprint PPD file to its original state.

* A new option, -o, causes cups-genppdupdate.5.0 to output the PPD files into a different directory.

* It is now possible to specify individual PPD files or printer queue names on the command line to only update/reset specific PPD files.

* The program no longer tries and fails to update Foomatic-based PPD files.

16) The Foomatic data generator now generates simplified data (using a driver name of "gutenprint-ijs-simplified.5.0") in addition to the standard, full-featured data (gutenprint-ijs.5.0).

17) The input slots (media sources) have been corrected for the Epson Stylus Photo R1800, R2400, and RX700.

18) New options to escputil allow specifying the number of line pairs and number of patterns for head alignment explicitly, if needed. In addition, the number of line pairs for the Epson Stylus Photo 700 has been changed from 7 to 15.

19) A few build problems have been fixed.

20) A Hungarian translation has been added.

21) The configure script now prints out a summary of configuration options selected at the end of the script run. For developers, "autogen.sh --help" now prints out the configure help if the configure script exists.

22) The Lexmark driver should now print correctly (this is only partially tested).

23) Chilean Office, Chilean Double Letter, and Chilean Double Office paper sizes have been added.

24) An error in the Czech, Danish, and Portuguese translations that caused the GIMP plugin to emit a warning at startup has been fixed.

25) The package is now built with libtool 1.5.22.

The following bugs have been fixed since Gutenprint 5.0.0-rc3:

1318890 Borderless print scaled wrongly 1379402 BJC-4400: SEGFAULT (photo-ink/color mode) 1393755 [Feature Request] Chilean paper sizes. 1417600 escputil clean and nozzle check don't work on new printers 1417603 escputil seg faults if you type ctrl-D to prompt 1421674 Gutenprint 5.0.0rc2 crashes in Mac OS X 10.2.8 1422101 Raw output does not work on R800 and related printers 1425951 Bug#351731: Fails in alignment with stylos photo 700 1447115 Epson driver broken in RC2 (DX4850) 1458059 Lexmark Z52 not working
1458911 Very poor performance with Epson R2400, R800, and R1800 1466678 Epson Stylus Photo R300 fails to eject last page 1467956 Print to CD prints incorrectly with CUPS driver 1478819 bad translation format
1487715 HP DeskJet 690 and related crash in grayscale w/photo ink 1487717 Canon/Lexmark printers fail in color mode w/BW inks 1487720 Canon printers crash in grayscale with photo ink