[Bug 150009] New: large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems

[Martin Bantz]

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           Summary: large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to
                    print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems
           Product: digikam
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: unspecified
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: digikam-devel kde org
        ReportedBy: martin.bantz smk dk


Version:           0.9.2-final (using KDE 3.5.7, compiled sources)
Compiler:          Target: i586-mandriva-linux-gnu
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.18.8.tex5

We are experiencing long printtime when small and especially large images are printed. An ordinary image, 2-4MB in size, takes forever to print (30+ minutes if ever) - but the situation can be handled by rightclicking the image, open with Gimp and then print - this only takes 5-15 seconds with the same image.

We use Digikam on a Linuxnetwork in a learning center for young kids at our museum - and when they print with Digikam we have to delete the printqueue and reset the printer for each job.

We are using a HP5550n lan printer, using Jetdirect. Clients prints to a Linux printserver.

All other applications print fine - Gimp, OpenOffice.

We had a Linux support technician to look at the problem and he diagnosed the problem to be a digikam compiled printsystem that causes this delay,

All Linuxsystems are PCLinuxos2007 final - and all systems are fully updated (synaptics).

This is the only problem we have with DigiKam - and we must say that it is a brilliant photo handling program,

Regards,
Martin Bantz
IT chief-consultant
Royal Museum of Fine Art
Denmark
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[Gilles Caulier-4]

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------- Additional Comments From caulier.gilles gmail com  2007-09-19 19:15 -------
Martin,

Are you using Image editor to print picture, or the print wizard kipi-plugin ?

In the first case, digiKam use KDE printing interface. Are you the same problem using others KDE application like konqueror, gwenview, krita, etc...

In the second one, the printing system is different. Are you tried to use it ?

Angelo, we have already few report about editor printing interface, and you have solve few issues about. What do you think about this report ?
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[Gilles Caulier-4]

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caulier.gilles gmail com changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |anaselli linux it
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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 11:06 -------
First some questions:
- is the system a Mandriva or another one? (the bug seems to say Mandriva, Reporter PCLinuxos2007)
- which hplip version are you using?
- is quality of printing better anyway in digikam -when finished- than in gimp?
- have you experienced any other kde application? Gwenview or kipi-plugins for instance.

Now what i can say is kde printing is different compared to the way gimp does, IIRC gimp use guteprint directly, that was an old idea of old printwizard maintainer iirc again.
Anyway I experienced some similar problems in mandriva and always with hp
printers, so i believe there something on hplip drivers.
Have a look at http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23455 for instance.
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[Martin Bantz]

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------- Additional Comments From martin.bantz smk dk  2007-09-20 11:43 -------
Dear Angelo,

I will check your questions right away, I'll be back as soon as possible,

regards,
Martin Bantz

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Fra: owner bugs kde org [mailto:owner bugs kde org] P� vegne af Angelo Naselli
Sendt: 20. september 2007 11:06
Til: Martin Bantz
Emne: [Bug 150009] large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems
Prioritet: Lav

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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 11:06 -------
First some questions:
- is the system a Mandriva or another one? (the bug seems to say Mandriva, Reporter PCLinuxos2007)
- which hplip version are you using?
- is quality of printing better anyway in digikam -when finished- than in gimp?
- have you experienced any other kde application? Gwenview or kipi-plugins for instance.

Now what i can say is kde printing is different compared to the way gimp does, IIRC gimp use guteprint directly, that was an old idea of old printwizard maintainer iirc again.
Anyway I experienced some similar problems in mandriva and always with hp
printers, so i believe there something on hplip drivers.
Have a look at http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23455 for instance.

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[Martin Bantz]

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------- Additional Comments From martin.bantz smk dk  2007-09-20 12:44 -------
Hi again Angelo,

- the system is PCLinuxOS2007 - the final version
- synaptic tells me that hplip is 1.6.9-3pclos2007 version
- the print seems the same in both digikam and gimp - but I can make further checks if needed

now for the interesting finding,

I just installed Gwenview (nice program) - and it produces the exact same behaviour - after 2 minutes I cancel the job and restart cups. Then using Gimp - the print is printed after 32 seconds,

the testimage is a JPG image, 2MB in size,

this must imply that the bug has to be reassigned, can You direct me?

any help greatly appreciated :-)

Regards,
Martin Bantz
www.ulk.dk


-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: owner bugs kde org [mailto:owner bugs kde org] P� vegne af Angelo Naselli
Sendt: 20. september 2007 11:06
Til: Martin Bantz
Emne: [Bug 150009] large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems
Prioritet: Lav

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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 11:06 ------- First some questions:
- is the system a Mandriva or another one? (the bug seems to say Mandriva, Reporter PCLinuxos2007)
- which hplip version are you using?
- is quality of printing better anyway in digikam -when finished- than in gimp?
- have you experienced any other kde application? Gwenview or kipi-plugins for instance.

Now what i can say is kde printing is different compared to the way gimp does, IIRC gimp use guteprint directly, that was an old idea of old printwizard maintainer iirc again.
Anyway I experienced some similar problems in mandriva and always with hp printers, so i believe there something on hplip drivers.
Have a look at http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23455 for instance.

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[Gilles Caulier-4]

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------- Additional Comments From caulier.gilles gmail com  2007-09-20 13:11 -------
Martin,

Sound like a problem in CUPS deamon running with hplip driver.

Note, here, i use everywhere hp printers (larserjet and colorjet) without problem.

Perhaps you need to update cups and/or hplip on your computer.

Gilles Caulier
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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 14:16 -------
> - synaptic tells me that hplip is 1.6.9-3pclos2007 version

http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ shows newer versions
As far as i can say i've seen a similar problem in mandriva 2007 (hplip 1.6.9)
and a speed improvement with mandriva 2007.1 (hplip 1.6.12).
> - the print seems the same in both digikam and gimp - but I can make further checks if needed

The important thing should be the quality, e.g. dpi settings, page type etc.
Other one could be the way we (in kde) print if I'm not wrong the process passes to gs before going
to the printer, and that is slow and long. To see that you could run on a konsole top and have a look
at active processes during the printing, I'm quite sure you will see gs untill the image is in print queue.

> this must imply that the bug has to be reassigned, can You direct me?

The best way could be asking for it to hplip developers/support (http://hplip.sourceforge.net/),
on their mailing lists, but they will ask to you for using the last version first i believe....

Angelo
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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 14:18 -------
Just a little note on hplip 2.7.7 release notes
3. Added pre_install_cmd to installer to fix cups issue in PCLinuxOS and Mandriva
maybe it could be pointless.... maybe not
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------- Additional Comments From joerg.kuehne lycos de  2007-09-20 14:21 -------
Hi,

I think it is a problem of print resolution. I have an Epson RX600. The ppd-file shows an resolution of 1440x1440dpi for photo quality. KDEPrint produces postscript level 1 files, which include the raw image data. An A4 page with 1440x1440dpi 24Bit color results in a ps file of size 600MByte !! CUPS invokes ps2ps, which takes a VERY LONG time to process this file.

OpenOffice can only print an A4 page in photo quality if I check the "Reduce Bitmaps" in the printer settings, otherwise it will be killed due to out of memory during preparation of the ps file. Maybe it tries to scale the images to the selected printer resolution.

A reasonable would be an option to the digikam/printwizard dialog to set a custom resolution. This would solve also the issue that printing to ps file is done with screen resolution which is useless for photos.
There were other issues of printing with low resolution. It seems that KPrinter uses screen resolution as fallback if it can not gather the value from the ppd-file and some ppd-files of some drivers may be "buggy". Here a custom resolution would solve that too.


Jörg
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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 14:35 -------
> A reasonable would be an option to the digikam/printwizard dialog to set a custom resolution.

Resolution (by now) is useless in printwizard, dpi are not used yet...

Krinter interface as far as i understood cannot make much for customizing resolution, and always if
i understood correctly driver settings override them. I haven't find a way yet to get "non standard"
info from kprinter, I mean ppd files and drivers can give more options like photo paper quality,
paper resolution, bordless printing. They are all present in kprinter dialog box, but i haven't found
a standard way to get them, think of page layout for instance, A4 is A4 for any printers, photo
paper (15x10 cm for instance) is not...
QT and KDE should "standardize" that first I believe, and disable if not given by drivers.... imo
of course.
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[Martin Bantz]

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------- Additional Comments From martin.bantz smk dk  2007-09-20 16:21 -------
Dear all,

hold your horses, I'll first try to get the newest hplip - I'm wondering why PCLinux (final) is shipped with this old version,

I'll get back as soon as possible,

Regards,
Martin

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Sendt: 20. september 2007 14:35
Til: Martin Bantz
Emne: [Bug 150009] large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems
Prioritet: Lav

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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 14:35 -------
> A reasonable would be an option to the digikam/printwizard dialog to set a custom resolution.


Resolution (by now) is useless in printwizard, dpi are not used yet...

Krinter interface as far as i understood cannot make much for customizing resolution, and always if
i understood correctly driver settings override them. I haven't find a way yet to get "non standard"
info from kprinter, I mean ppd files and drivers can give more options like photo paper quality,
paper resolution, bordless printing. They are all present in kprinter dialog box, but i haven't found
a standard way to get them, think of page layout for instance, A4 is A4 for any printers, photo
paper (15x10 cm for instance) is not...
QT and KDE should "standardize" that first I believe, and disable if not given by drivers.... imo
of course.

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[Martin Bantz]

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------- Additional Comments From martin.bantz smk dk  2007-09-21 14:53 -------
Hi again,

the upgrade to HPLip2.7.7 didn't make any differnce,

this time I print directly to the JetDirect port on the printer. I've selected the Adobe PS PPD file when installing to HPLip - this is the exact same PPD file I use in Gimp/Gutenprint,

The Gimp is printing with the same speed using the 2.7.7 drivers (that is around 30 seconds),

I sure hope one of this group has an idea of where to look now,

Regards,
Martin

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Sendt: 20. september 2007 14:35
Til: Martin Bantz
Emne: [Bug 150009] large print is sent to printer but is taking hours to print - when opening with gimp->print then no problems
Prioritet: Lav

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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-20 14:35 -------
> A reasonable would be an option to the digikam/printwizard dialog to set a custom resolution.


Resolution (by now) is useless in printwizard, dpi are not used yet...

Krinter interface as far as i understood cannot make much for customizing resolution, and always if i understood correctly driver settings override them. I haven't find a way yet to get "non standard"
info from kprinter, I mean ppd files and drivers can give more options like photo paper quality, paper resolution, bordless printing. They are all present in kprinter dialog box, but i haven't found a standard way to get them, think of page layout for instance, A4 is A4 for any printers, photo paper (15x10 cm for instance) is not...
QT and KDE should "standardize" that first I believe, and disable if not given by drivers.... imo of course.

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------- Additional Comments From joerg.kuehne lycos de  2007-09-25 22:37 -------
After further investigations about the KDE/Qt print mechanism I found out that the printing problem with digikam/printwizard is a Qt problem. The Qt postscript driver is very poor and can only create postscript level 1. The resolution of the image is not the problem. It seems that the image is embedded with the original size. The larger the source image the larger the postscript file. But many printer driver use ghostscript to create raster files and the postscript created with Qt is very inefficient. Preview and further processing takes very long. Gimp uses gimp-print or gutenprint, which can create a postscript level 3 file. Ghostscript can process this file much much faster when viewing and printing. I think there is nothing to be done.

Maybe you can try the program photoprint (http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/photoprint_news.shtml). It can be called from digikam context menu "Open with ...". It uses gutenprint directly and prints very fast.

JK
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[Gilles Caulier-4]

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------- Additional Comments From caulier.gilles gmail com  2007-09-25 22:43 -------
Joerg,

Thanks for this investigaution. now the problem is clear.

Perhaps something can be done if Qt version 4 handle Postscript V.3 properlly. (digiKam is already ported to KDE4/Qt4). Are you some informations about ?

Gilles Caulier
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------- Additional Comments From joerg.kuehne lycos de  2007-09-25 23:51 -------
I found some discussions, but I think neither Qt nor KDE-Print will provide a quick solution. See:

http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-print-devel/2007-January/001407.html
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/45560

especially:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/45560/focus=45682

JK
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[Arnd Baecker]

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------- Additional Comments From arnd.baecker web de  2007-09-26 07:47 -------
Would it be possible to allow for different "printing back-ends"?
With this the user could choose among the default and
others, like the above mentioned photoprint.
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------- Additional Comments From anaselli linux it  2007-09-26 10:40 -------
> Would it be possible to allow for different "printing back-ends"?
> With this the user could choose among the default and
> others, like the above mentioned photoprint.

We could try to make a guteprint frontend (kguteprint?)
into extragear/libs and use it into printwizard... that could be very nice
and printwizard could be the optional printing for users... the default
one is using kprinter...
I can't do that without help though :(  
Anyway what do you think about it?
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------- Additional Comments From caulier.gilles gmail com  2007-09-26 10:46 -------
Angello,

> I can't do that without help though :(  

I'm here to help you of course. And i'm sure than others contributors will be interressed by this job. Printing is common in photo world... (Gerhard, Arnd, Luka, etc... ?)

> Anyway what do you think about it?  

I'm agree. But there is always something like this in opensource world. Are you checked this point using google ?

Gilles
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------- Additional Comments From caulier.gilles gmail com  2007-09-26 10:53 -------
Angelo,

I'm so surprized than no KDE interface already exist to gutenprint (not "guteprint")

I'm not sure if a new shared lib is the right way. I think than something in KDE core is more appropriate. Perhaps we need to contact kde print devel team on mailing list before to start something...

Gilles
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