Local Printing

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One of the challenges of an advanced DTP application like Scribus, is the ability to generate what can be referred to as "high-level" PostScript or PDF features. By high level, this is meant to describe things like transparency, blends, masks and gradients, usually created by professional grade DTP applications and illustration programs.

Contents

Linux/UNIX/OS X: CUPS

First, always make sure you have the newest updated versions of CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and Ghostscript available for your distribution. Newer versions of CUPS and Ghostscript are much better at supporting the kinds of high level PS level 3 and PDF features Scribus can create.

If you compile Scribus yourself, make sure that you have the CUPS development libraries installed before you start building from source.

Basic Options:

  • Print to any installed printer with the defaults, depending on your specific installation. You can also specify printing in grayscale, as well as select the pages or a range of pages. As in other printing dialogs, you can also set the number of copies that will be printed.
  • You can choose different PostScript levels, the default is PostScript level 3.
  • You can open the Print Preview from the Printer dialog
  • You can also use an external print command, for example XPP, or KPrinter, as shown below. In a KDE environment it is recommended to use the kprinter command.

Image:Printing1.png

  • Note: You will need to use an alternative printer command with some Linux distros, notably recent versions of Fedora, including Fedora 8. A simple workaround is to enter lp -d printername, where printername is the specific name of the printer you wish to use.
  • On many Linux and UNIX distributions there are optional gimp-print or gutenprint drivers (gutenprint was known previously as gimp-print). These drivers are not only for GIMP, but can be used in any program to give you more exacting print control and in some cases much better output with photographs. Many printers on Linux are supported by more than one driver – typically an "ijs" driver and gimp-print/gutenprint. The main difference is the more refined color and ink density adjustments available in gimp-print/gutenprint. Often it will be slower than other drivers, but the higher output quality may be desirable.

Image:Printing3.png

To access setup and configuration for locally installed CUPS printers, there are 2 recommended methods to this with CUPS: 1. Type: http://localhost:631 in a web browser to use the CUPS web interface. 2. Use the KDE Print Manager (kprinter). No other option will give you full access to all the features with CUPS.

You can also use kprinter in combination with other programs which are not CUPS aware, but can benefit from high quality printing. As an example, Adobe Reader on Linux before version 7.0.5 does not recognize CUPS, but has a command line window to call kprinter. Thus, you can, with the correct settings, print high resolution PDF's with the same high quality as Scribus.

When you are using a true PostScript printer with Linux, especially more complex ones, which have multiple bins, sorting or advanced image and resolution settings, ideally you have the PPD file which comes on the driver disk with the printer. If not, try to download the latest from the manufacturer's site. A great many printer drivers come as windows .exe files. For instance, any of the HP ones are simple WinZip self extractors. Any recent wine will open them easily. Then, it is strongly recommended that you run cupstestppd on the file to make sure it follows the PPD specification. If there is an error, and there are often minor ones, the actual specs are here.

cupstestppd is a command line utility which you can use to verify the correctness of PPD files. What is a PPD file? A PPD file is a specially formatted text file which can be used on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows to install a true PostScript printer. On Linux in combination with foomatic and CUPS it is used for all printers to enumerate all the printer's capabilities. This command line tool verifies that the PPD file meets the specifications for PPD files. If there are issues, it will indicate how to remedy this. cupstestppd is most useful when using the manufacturer's supplied PPD on Linux.

Advanced Options

  • You can "print" a separation. This enables you to create a 4 color separation of the CMYK inks used in process printing. Each of the inks will print on a separate page. This can also be saved to a PostScript file for later processing. Furthermore, you can also decide to only print single separations, eg. cyan.
  • Mirrored Printing: This option enables you to mirror pages on the printer. This is useful when printing things like card layouts, calendars or brochures to compensate for folds and cuts or when duplexing prints.
  • Setting the Media Size: This option will try to enforce a certain media size in the output device, such as US Letter. It may or may not work, as some printers simply ignore the command.
  • Clipping to Page Margins: If this option is enabled, objects outside the page margins won't be printed.
  • Under Color Removal: This is an option to both save ink and to improve the quality of some gray shades. UCR means that gray shades that are composed of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow will be replaced with Black.
  • Converting Spot Colors to Process Colors: Inkjet and laser printers can't print spot colors. Therefore, it's necessary to print process colors instead. This option will enforce the conversion. For further information, see the chapter on Spot Colors.

Hints

  • cups-calibrate is a command line program you can run as root to calibrate the printer. This only works with the gimp-print drivers – not other CUPS drivers. This is a step by step procedure which in some cases can improve the sharpness of your prints.
  • CUPS also has an escputil command line utility for cleaning the heads or checking ink levels on Epson printers. If you have KDE installed, this can be accessed via the KDE Print Manager (kprinter). Otherwise simply type: escputil --help for options.


Image:Printing2.png

Exporting a PostScript File

You can also use the Print dialog to export your Scribus document as a PostScript file. Technically, the difference between printing and creating a PS file isn't huge: If you print on paper, a temporary PS file will be created and sent to the printer driver. However, if you export to a PostScript file, you create a permanent PostScript file, which can be opened or imported by other programs, or printed directly from the command line.

To create a PostScript file, select "File" in the drop-down list under Print Destination. Just like in other file dialogs, you can insert a name for the file and change the output folder. The only difference is that you have to click on the "Print" button to "Save" the file.

Since you are actually creating a virtual print job when you are saving a PostScript file, all printing options are available to you. You should be aware that there is a technical difference between different PostScript levels. Scribus uses its own built-in PostScript engine to create PS level 3 files, which is the default. If a printer requires PS level 1 or more likely, level 2, the export is handled by Ghostscript – yet another reason to have the latest GS installed.

Printing with Windows

The printing options on Windows depend on the capabilities of the printer driver, which may vary from printer to printer.

Printing with OS/2

Printing support for OS/2 is not complete, but PDF export is. You can easily print via Acrobat Reader or another PDF viewer as a temporary workaround.

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