[lug] Black bar between pages when printing 2 pages/sheet.

[Lee Woodworth]

On 08/25/10 11:12, Bruce Long wrote:
> I have tried pdfs, postscripts, with AND WITHOUT psnup. PDFs and postscripts
> all preview correctly. And they printed correctly on my old printer. (Anyone
> want a trusty old HP1100 laser printer BTW? Works great but requires
> something called a "parallel interface" ;) )
> 
> How would I know if the problem was with ghostscript?

You could also manually use ghostscript to convert the ps file to a png.

Or open the ps source with gimp. My gimp version has postscript as an input file type.
If you see the black bar either the input has it or gimp is using the same rasterizer
as the printing system. It is possible gimp just uses ghostscript for the file
conversion.

You might look for other conversion tools. Inkscape can be built with the ability
to open pdfs, eps and ps files. It will be a vector to vector conversion so
ghostscript might not be used.

There is also a pdf2svg program for converting pdfs. ghostscript is not one of its
direct dependencies -- uses cairo or poppler. Then open the svg with inkscape.

I don't recall whether you mentioned that other documents print ok, that only
the n-up printing is showing problem. If you haven't tried other document types, you
might want to print a cups test page from the web interface, start at:
    http://localhost:631

FYI: On gentoo, hplip has a runtime dependency on ghostscript-gpl, and gimp2.6.{8,10}
     use poppler for pdf (and presumably ps) handling.

> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Lee Woodworth <blug-mail at duboulder.com>wrote:
> 
>> On 08/25/10 08:14, Bruce Long wrote:
>>> I have a shiny new HP 2320fxi color laser printer which I would like to
>> use
>>> to print booklets of source code.
>>
>> Is this a postscript native printer? Printer postscript and
>> ghostscript-based
>> previews could look different.
>>
>>>
>>> The problem is that when I print any file (e.g., ps or pdf) with two
>> pages
>>> per sheet I get a thick black bar separating the two pages.
>>>
>>> Strangely, this occurs no matter how I try to get two pages/sheet. For
>>> example, if I rely on CUPS by using "-o number-up=2" I get the black bar.
>>> But if I use psnup to create a ps file that is already formated to have
>> two
>>> pages/sheet I still have the black bar when I print. Interestingly, the
>>> black bar does NOT show up in print preview or in the evince document
>>> viewer.
>>
>> Have you tried generating pdfs instead of postscript? Also use a different
>> viewer. I would trust the accuracy of a pdf preview more than of a ps
>> preview.
>> Then print a test page from the pdf viewer. If pdfs preview and print
>> correctly I would suspect pnsup and/or ghostscript. If the printer doesn't
>> do native postscript, cups is likely using ghostscript to convert your
>> ps files.
>>
>> You might also check for newer versions of psnup, cups and ghostscript.
>>
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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