Printer Options

Having gained some understanding of RISC OS through RPi 2 and 3, it seems like I can do most of the things that I want in RISC OS 5 without using Windows OS. Currently I use PrintPDF (thanks Steve Fryatt) to create pdf’s for printing using my windows laptop. I am thinking of buying a Titanium or AMX6 board but would like to be able to print directly to a printer without needing intervention from a Windows PC. One possibility seems to be to get Postscript3 from MW Software and look at at using a Laser printer but would like to know what other RISC users are doing.

Yes, this is exactly what I did. We have a HP Laser Jet 1525n color, where the n is for network. We have had it a few years now and it’s worked fine with RISC OS. It’s on the LAN. As you say, get Postscript3 from MW software and PrintPDF from Steve Fryatt.

I’d try with the supplied PS2 driver first. Different printers implement postscript differently (due to Adobe licencing). I actually find the PS2 driver better (fewer “error pages” printed) with my laser “all-in-one” than the PS3 driver. For what it is worth, we can supply/recommend RISC OS compatible printers.

I actually find the PS2 driver better (fewer “error pages” printed) with my laser “all-in-one” than the PS3 driver.

Did you get to the bottom of that? I.e. was the PS created by the PS3 driver really illegal? I never had a single error page with my PS printers and either the PS2 driver or the PS3 driver. And those printers never had original Adobe implementations.

Steffen – I’m sorry, I can’t recall the exact details. I think I was trying to print a moderately complex page (perhaps with some irregular bitmaps and/or complex artworks). My most common job is printing a very complex Artworks file (it takes a while to calculate the postscript for just that one page) so it may have been that, but it could just as easily have been a manual or a printer test page (“PrinterTestB”). Either way, the printer just gave a stack dump error page. It was OK on the PS2 driver, although I recall getting the best colour-match via UniPrint, leaving me unsure which was the “best” solution – native printing with a small colour imbalance, or UniPrint-ing for accurate colours but more more circuitous and larger files. Printer is a Brother.

Printer is a Brother.

I have a PS Brother printer too. But it prints only blank pages.
(with PS2 or PS3 drivers)

@ David Lane Thanks for your reply, great to know that you have had a good experience with HP Laser Jet printer.

@ Andrew I would be quite happy to buy a printer from you but the P&P to Australia could be a problem. Thanks for suggesting to try PS2 driver before buying PS3 driver. You mentioned RISC OS compatible printers, does that mean PCL and or Postscript capable?

@ David Feugey, if the Brother printer only produces blanks for you, what is your RISC OS print solution?

@David You may have something set up wrong, perhaps (eg. printer expecting different language or something) as I’ve not seen problems with a range of colour and mono Brothers. I tend to be using our “network printer drivers” to transmit data to the printer, usually in Postscript but also in PCL.

@Norman For mono printing, either PCL (4/5/6) or Postscript is fine. For colour printers, you’re safe bet is only Postscript. Colour PCL is often described as PCL 5c but there’s no real RISC OS 5c driver. Indeed, the 4/5/6 driver is actually just rebadged “older” PCL (I forget whether it is PCL2 or 3, but it is basically written for an early HP Laserjet, if memory serves). Martin W’s Gutenprint opens up more options, but can be quite laborious – I don’t have much first hand experience with it though.

David Feugey, if the Brother printer only produces blanks for you, what is your RISC OS print solution?

I print to PDF :)

David You may have something set up wrong, perhaps (eg. printer expecting different language or something) as I’ve not seen problems with a range of colour and mono Brothers. I tend to be using our “network printer drivers” to transmit data to the printer, usually in Postscript but also in PCL.

Yes, that’s strange. I did not try network printing. For PCL, I get an error from !Printer related to something missing. Did not try further (no time). I’ll make another test with a Kyocera printer, as it supports plain PS.

Martin W’s Gutenprint opens up more options, but can be quite laborious – I don’t have much first hand experience with it though.

I tried that path but in my experiece three pages which took less than a minute to print in Windows took around 1 hour with Gutenprint.

I will look at PCL/PS printers (probably HP) but in the meantime I have ordered Uniprint for use with VA on my laptop and current Canon MG7160 printer.

Many thanks to all contributors for your help.

For what it is worth, I bought a Ricoh Aficio SP C430DN SP laser printer 4 or 5 years ago. It’s a beast, both in weight and price (nearly 1000 euro), but also in quality and speed. Duplex, 1200 × 1200 true dpi, network card – and very, VERY cheap prints of really excellent, near photo quality.

Martin Würthners PS3 printer driver controls the prints from the RISC OS machines in our house, while all other computers (Windows and Apple) use their own software. While the latter two sometimes fail to produce good results – or any result at all -, the RISC OS prints have never let me down!

I bought a Ricoh Aficio SP C430DN SP laser printer 4 or 5 years ago. It’s a beast, both in weight and price (nearly 1000 euro), but also in quality and speed. Duplex, 1200 × 1200 true dpi, network card – and very, VERY cheap prints of really excellent, near photo quality.

Heavily used at work and almost capable of resisting damage by hospital staff.
Anything fully capable of resisting damage would, if it existed, also be capable of surviving a nuclear blast.

I bought a Ricoh Aficio SP C430DN SP laser printer 4 or 5 years ago.

Thanks for the info and recommendations, looks like a great printer, not sure if I need the surviving a nuclear blast capability, unfortunately it comes in a bit beyond my budget unless I can find one on ebay.

We bought a Xerox Phaser 6600 a year ago, and it works nicely with RISC OS: even the web-based configuration interface for the printer works OK in NetSurf. We have it connected via the network rather than USB (though USB works fine for a single machine) using RemotePrinterFS.

An added bonus with some modern printers is that you can send them PDF files and they can print them natively. To start with I used the command line, and a copy command:

Copy ADFS::HardDisc4.$.Example/pdf RemotePrinterFS#proto=LPD;address=xerox;sendfirst=datafile;format=l: ~C

But now I have a system variable set for the PrintType for PDF files which does the same job, so I can just drop a PDF on the printer icon on the iconbar and it will be sent to the printer:

Set Alias$@PrintType_ADF Copy %%0 RemotePrinterFS#proto=LPD;address=xerox;sendfirst=datafile;format=l: ~C

Quite neat! I can use the printer’s web configuration to choose whether to print two pages to a side if I feel like reading small print and wasting less paper.

We bought a Xerox Phaser 6600 a year ago, and it works nicely with RISC OS

Many thanks for your helpful information, not just for a suitable printer but also for examples of settings that work with printing pdf files directly. Just what I needed.

I’d add that our Network Printer Drivers 2 product provides proper background printing for networking, job queuing (ie. works with things like mail-merge without overloading), deals with “busy” printers (retry) and is faster. It includes a utility to allow sending PDF/PS files direct to printers, too as well as allowing you to manage such printers from iconbar UI. It supports multiple network printing protocols.

Thanks Andrew