As usual the state of support for this printer is well documented here.
Looks like what this printer needs is someone to continue the already started coding project and reverse engineering effort; the orphaned project is archived at www.linuxprinting.org.
I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)
So it would seem. Still, when I last set up a website it was trivial to offer unified web/list/nntp forums; dunno why everyone puts so much effort into kooky SQL-backed homegrown schemes.
Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...
Indeed. Are you still in Boston? Perhaps we should round up some others and have a meat meet.
Indeed. It's particularly interesting when you observe that the gimp-print framework will be able to print--rather well--on inkjets from various competing manufacturers using the same dithering/color code. When free software has leveled the "software-driven color quality" playing field (which really is pretty level as is for the big players, just with lots of duplicated effort to keep up with the Joneses) it will be interesting to see where manufacturers begin to differentiate instead. Mechanism quality? Operating cost? They certainly seem to be running out of room for improvement in the raw dot size and placement arena; the best HP has managed recently is the Detroit route of thirteen different trims for each actual model (most of the others have only half-heartedly followed thus far, but Epson's got a card-reading Stylus, and further daft SKUs are probably going to show up from the rest soon).
I'd love to see a new mechanism arrive without the various disadvantages of current low-cost printing, but heck if I can find anything likely on the horizon. It's just a hard problem to do laserlike black, dye-sub-like photos, and sharp, accurate spot color on plain paper from the same printer... The industry has done wonderful (heck, almsot miraculous!) things by spinning on the inkjet concept, but as a techie, I'd love to see the spinning repeated on another technology.
So I guess this is good news, although it seems to me to be an example of the whole "executives listen to consultants before they'll listen to employees (or g*d forbid customers)" syndrome. Clearly only progress can come from this, so it's a good thing.
In any case, until said progress arrives, people ought to take stock of those companies that offer better support for free software users, and buy products from them. HP makes all sorts of things (reasonable mid-range LAN euipment, workstations, etc) but as I mainly know printers, here's what I know about the industry as things stand right now:
Epson provides publically available developer information for their printers, scanners, etc. Epson inkjets, therefore, work extraordinarily well using free software drivers.
Lexmark provides binary RH Linux-x86-only drivers for two representative inkjets. They're klunky, and they're nonfree, but they do work, and they do represent a gimmer of actual Linux support.
Of the reverse-engineering-reuired inkjets, HP is the best understood, followed by Canon, followed by Lexmark. None, of course, is at all well understood in absolute terms, although the gimp-print folks are rapidly absorbing support and developers from other projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like what this printer needs is someone to continue the already started coding project and reverse engineering effort; the orphaned project is archived at www.linuxprinting.org.
Yes, it's me.
I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)
So it would seem. Still, when I last set up a website it was trivial to offer unified web/list/nntp forums; dunno why everyone puts so much effort into kooky SQL-backed homegrown schemes.
Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...
Indeed. Are you still in Boston? Perhaps we should round up some others and have a meat meet.
> Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as
> "the email machine", everyone would log in and use
> Pine, around 93-94.
Oh, my. Emerald.
> I've always been kind of old schooler wrt e-mail, I used
> Pine 'til I finally wrote my own crappy webmail.
Hmm. I've never used pine, just foisted it on everyone else. At the time I did mail with emacs/rmail or emacs/gnus; since 96 I've used raw MH.
>Go Jumbos, and all that...
Kind of reminds me of tufts.general. Did that die? I discontinued my tufts.* feed some time back...
I'd love to see a new mechanism arrive without the various disadvantages of current low-cost printing, but heck if I can find anything likely on the horizon. It's just a hard problem to do laserlike black, dye-sub-like photos, and sharp, accurate spot color on plain paper from the same printer... The industry has done wonderful (heck, almsot miraculous!) things by spinning on the inkjet concept, but as a techie, I'd love to see the spinning repeated on another technology.
In any case, until said progress arrives, people ought to take stock of those companies that offer better support for free software users, and buy products from them. HP makes all sorts of things (reasonable mid-range LAN euipment, workstations, etc) but as I mainly know printers, here's what I know about the industry as things stand right now:
As always, if you want to know anything about the state of free software printer support, consult www.linuxprinting.org. Particularly apropos are my vendor scorecards and suggested printers pages.