********************* WHICH DRIVER TO USE? ******************************** The lz11-project offers a new drivers for your Lexmark Z11 / Compaq IJ300. ----------------------lz11-V2----------------------------------------------- The driver lz11-V2 is an improvement of the lz11 driver, which was first released in 2002. Additionally to the features of lz11, which include variable page sizes and ink saving, the lz11-V2 version comes with a backward compatibility mode for the filters "cZ11" and "cZ11somsom". While the cZ11 filter is emulated in an improved way, which helps to save ink and takes away the grayish look of color prints, the cZ11somsom emulation only supports the basic properties (as InkType and DitherPPI). Ink weighting is not included, but merely needed, because of a new pixel placement algorithm for black and color ink. The original driver-code "cZ11" was written by Christian Kornblum in 2001 (this code still is the backbone of this filter). It got enhancements and bug fixes from Som-Som, Erik Bernhardson, Mihael Hategan, Ullrich Sigwanz and Till Kamppeter WARNING:This driver is known not to work with the Z31 and Z51. In fact, it is known to hose those printers' flash in some circumstances! PRINTER OPTIONS The printer driver offers several options that make it very handy to work with CUPS / Foomatic You can select these options via the CUPS web interface or e.g kprinter, printerdrake, yast2 or what graphical user interface ever, or set them by passing them via the command line by lpadmin -d <my-z11-printer-name> -o Option1=Value1 -o Option2=Value .... Here is a short overview about the options and their possible values, the default is marked by an asterisk (*): Resolution: 457dpi 548dpi *574dpi 582dpi 600dpi -------------------------------------------------- is the number of pixels that are used to map a postscript picture to the Z11/IJ300's dot. Usually you should not care about this setting SkewAdjustment: 1 .. *32 .. 64; 0=testpage -------------------------------------------------- ...the alignment of vertical lines in relation to the ink-jets of your black ink cartridge. The default is 32, but you may want to experiment with this to get good black prints. Use the support program "lz11.adjust" to find the best value. NOTE: xterm -e lz11.adjust will be the best invokation, when you are starting the adjustment from a graphical user interface like KDE or Gnome via <Alt>+<F2> CancelJob: No *Yes FormFeed ------------------------------------------------- Allows ANY operator to cancel the current Z11/IJ300 print job smoothly by invoking "lz11.stop". The advantage of this method is that the printer is left in a defined state after the job was cancelled. If you don't want to allow this job termination method, set "CancelJob" to "No" - But be aware that the printer might "hick-up" the next time, you try to print a job. CancelJob=FormFeed will stop the job on demand and eject the last fed page that is in the printer InkType: *Black Color ------------------------------------------------- The color cartridge type which is currently in your printer InkSaving/Ink Saving: 0 1 *2 3 4 5 ------------------------------------------------- The amount of ink you can save when printing. Here is a short overview over the InkSaving modes InkType=Color 0 : smoothly dithered (legacy som-som style) 1 : very dense colors, finest possible resolution 2 : dense colors, a bit grany 3 : best for almost every type of printout 4 : still good quality, but more draft 5 : definitely a draft mode InkType=Black 0 : smoothly dithered (legacy som-som style) 1 : Best quality black (a bit sharp - technical) 2 : Still good, but a little "drafty" 3,4,5 : draft, draftier, draftest PageSize: Letter *A4 A5 A6 HalfLetter Legal PageRegion: Letter *A4 A5 A6 HalfLetter Legal ------------------------------------------------- Change PageSize to adapt to sheet size. ----------------------the scripts------------------------------------------- There are 4 scripts included that you can use right away to deal with 300dpi and 600dpi bitcmyk (color) -bitmaps or bit (black & white) -bitmaps. This scripts might be useful, when using older printer filters like "/usr/lib/apsfilter/bin/apsfilter" there are cZ11-bit-300dpi cZ11-bit-600dpi cZ11-bitcmyk-300dpi cZ11-bitcmyk-600dpi They are all set up for A4 sheets, but when you know the proper pixel dimensions you can also edit and adjust them for other paper sizes (lz11.foomatic lists all paper dimensions, it might be worth to look) ----------------------replacing the old driver cZ11------------------------- When you print with CUPS or other foomatic backends you can just skip this part ;-) The installation will create an executable "cZ11" that will substitude older versions of the cZ11 printer filter (Christian Kornblums's famous version), which is still used e.g. with SuSE. You will recognize that the printouts are lighter (33% of ink) and less greyish compared to the older cZ11 version. The "som-som" driver is also emulated, but the ink toning options will have no effect. For the update of older filters just invoke make install (as root) ----------------------stop "false" print outs ------------------------------ You may want to stop a printout in case of emergency at any time. Call "lz11.stop" for this purpose. You will be able to cancel any Z11/IJ300 job that has the CancelJob-option set to "Yes" (this is default) If not ... When you have invoked "lz11.stop" you will be asked for the root password, because only the dedicated users "root" and "lp" will have permission to remove the running printer filter from the process list. If you find this anoying, insert the following lines (or a modification of these) into your sudoers file by invoking "visudo". This will allow everybody to stop the Z11/IJ300 printing at any time. See "man sudoers" for details and restrictions. # insert for /etc/sudoers Host_Alias CZ11HOSTS = ALL User_Alias CZ11USERS = ALL CZ11USERS CZ11HOSTS = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/lz11.kill # end of insert for /etc/sudoers NOTE: NEVER EDIT /etc/sudoers DIRECTLY, ALWAYS USE visudo !!! ----------------------adjusting the skew of a black ink cartridge----------- Since the performance of the black ink cartridge was increased by using all available color jets, the black ink cartridge is much more sensitive to jitters in the vertical skew. The driver was completed by an adjustment add-on. You can print a test sheet that will show you vertical lines with numbers beneath. The number that correlates with the most "perfect" vertical line is the adjustment value to use for the skew adjustment. When you use Foomatic (usually with CUPS) the printout and the input of the appropriate values as well can easily be done by entering the according value into the "Skew Adjustment" field of the according foomatic frontend (CUPS via http://localhost:631, xpp, kprinter) example: call me@mycomputer:~> $ lz11.adjust or KDE or Gnome via <Alt>+<F2>: xterm -e lz11.adjust to print the calibration page afterwards - for xpp as graphical frontend in this example - call me@mycomputer:~> $ xpp -> Choose the Printer Queue -> Options -> TabSheet "Adjustment" -> Select the best "Skew Adjustment" value -> Save Settings -> Cancel -> Close by me@mycomputer:~> $ lz11.testpage you can print a fancy testpage to judge the effect of the Skew Adjustment the corresponding FoomaticRipOption is "SkewAdjustment" just in case you don't want to use a graphical frontend for administration and/or printing. ----------------------Troubleshoot------------------------------------------ Setting up a new PPD file might be not as easy as it seems. Therefore it might be a good idea to delete and create the affected printer queues from the scratch, when printing fails or the Skew Adjustment option does not work. The new installer will take care that your setup is updated, but a manual check won't hurt. ----------------------Saving Paper in the Test Phase------------------------ It might be helpful to know that it is possible to test an installation, without needing tons of paper, when you are not sure if your setup would work. When you invoke the compilation of the driver with some special parameters the printed data will be written to some bmp-files in /tmp namely: /tmp/lz11_dbg0.bmp /tmp/lz11_dbg1.bmp ... /tmp/lz11_dbg9.bmp To achieve this, call (as root) lz11.install --debug You can now print to your Z11/IJ300, but the result will go to /tmp A good tool to inspect these bitmaps is eog (Eye-of-Gnome). When you want to revert to real paper prints, call lz11.install ---------------------- How to set up a Z11/IJ300 on the command line ?------------- If you want to use the command line tool "lpadmin" to set up your Z11/IJ300 printer, the following invocation might be a helpful example # lpadmin -p <name-of-my-printer-queue> \ > -P /usr/share/cups/model/lz11-ppd/Lexmark-Z11-lz11-V2.ppd \ > -v parallel:/dev/lp0 \ > -E ----------------------CREDITS----------------------------------------------- Again, I would like to thank our Michael in Berlin who did still pet his "acient" Z11. He did the test of this version (my Z11 is broken, because of too extensive tests). Everthing you perceive as good, might be based on Michael's initiative. For everything that is bad, just blame me. ----------------------LICENSE----------------------------------------------- The LICENSE certainly is GPL And now have a lot of fun Yours lz11-Team