What LPR arguments do I need to print a 1400×800 pixel image on a 4×6 label

cupslprnetwork-printerprintingups

This is driving me nuts. UPS sends our system a 1400×800 GIF image of a shipping label, which is supposed to fit nicely on a 4×6 page.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the command line options right to make it happen.

We're using an Eltron/Zebra 2844 with a network adapter, and printing from our Ubuntu 8.04 server using CUPS. We're using the correct drivers, and test pages print correctly.

No matter what I try though, it insists on printing the UPS labels accross 6 pages, with a little bit of the label on each page, or way too small.

I've tried a bazillion different lpr settings, most of them producing garbage. The closest I've gotten is this:

    lpr -P Eltron2844 -o natural-scaling=55 -o page-right=0 -o page-left=0 -o landscape -o media="4x6" ./1ZY437560399620027.gif

but it causes the image to be too small on the page. It's about an inch too short, and there's a 1/2" margin on both sides. If I bump the scale up to 56, it explodes the image onto two pages, and squashes it.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

Have you tried converting the gif to a postscript file? If you have imagemagick you can use:

convert 1ZY437560399620027.gif 1ZY437560399620027.ps

and print that? You can also use print to file in gimp or others.

I'm assuming the issue is that lpr is going through a helper application that is creating the margins you have a problem with.

Best of luck,
João Miguel Neves

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to set advaced printing options when using “lpr” to print

A quick google search for "lpr double sided" found out this page.

 lpr -o sides=two-sided-long-edge foo.ps

Windows Printing – Reason for Choosing a Different Print Processor

Way back at the beginning of Windows, Windows printing was not considered reliable. The standard to which it was being compared was NetWare (this was the 1990's after all), which at the time had a good reputation for reliability. Because of this printer manufacturers created their own Print Processors under the impression that:

They could do it better than Microsoft
By owning more of the print-stack they were better able to control the print environment and produce more repeatable results
Certain windows-isms could come into play for remote printers (such as those hosted on a central print-server) and local printers, where the same job can render differently based on local/remote status
They could provide advanced print features, such as toner-out notifications, internal hardware failure notices, and the like.

HP was prominent in this, and in fact still ships a print-processor with its drivers. Though in recent years their 'enterprise' product line has seen this less often, where their consumer product line tends to rely on it more. This has the side-effect (likely intentional) that their consumer product is a poor team player on centralized print-servers.

The Windows print-processor has gotten a lot better over the years. Even so, there are still some instances where a custom processor is needed.

At my old job at a large University, where we had something like 1700 computer-lab seats and printed about 2 million pages an academic quarter, we needed a custom processor for our print-auditing solution. As I understand it, it just acted as a shim between the spooler and the actual RAW provider that allowed for advanced features like tracking quotas and handling charge-back.

The above are for third party print providers that commonly come along with the driver install. Windows has its own providers, and I've rarely seen things set to anything other than "RAW".

Related Topic