What is m2300w?
---------------
The m2300w driver is an open source Linux driver for the
Konica Minolta magicolor 2300W and 2400W color laser printers.
The driver is basically intended for being used in conjunction with
"foomatic" (see http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html), which
is a database-driven system for integrating free software printer
drivers with common spoolers under Unix, like CUPS, LPRng, LPD,
GNUlpr, PPR, PDQ, CPS, and direct printing.
Copyright and Licensing
-----------------------
The m2300w driver is free software. You can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
Though we do our best to avoid that, there is a small residual
risk, that the use of this driver may damage your printer.
It is a fact, that laser printer engines CAN BE damaged if
they are not driven appropriately (for instance, putting down
far too much toner on the paper can actually contaminate or
even damage the fuser, etc.).
IN NO EVENT WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO
MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE,
BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING DAMAGES TO THE PRINTER),
EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
What's new in 0.5?
------------------
The m2300w driver now also supports the magicolor 2400W.
Special thanks go to Thomas Rohringer for contributing
the backend for the 2400W.
What's new in 0.4?
------------------
Version 0.4 contains no new features. It only resolves
the following bugs:
- 1022300 Should not start CUPS automatically
Now CUPS is only restarted, if it cupsd is running, thus
avoiding the start of CUPS, if it was not running previously.
- 1034790 m2300w does not work with gs 8.15
A workaround for the ghostscript problem
http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=687702 has been
implemented. Now m2300w 0.4 now can be used in conjunction
with the new ghostscript versions >= 8.15.
What's new in 0.3?
------------------
This is the 3rd pre-release of the driver.
* Reworked print modes
- Added AutoColor mode, which detects pages containing only black
text, and prints these pages in B/W, which is much faster, while
color pages are still printed in color.
- Added a Draft mode for saving toner
- Recreated all color profiles
- Added an option to specify how to interpret /DeviceRGB
colors in the PostScript documents being printed
- Added a "PrintoutMode" option for selecting the most
common print modes with a single paramter
* Improved checks for required prerequisites
* Added workaround for several problems of gs 7.xx
* Added full RPM build capability
* The RPM now installs foomatic-rip, if missing on the system
Installation
------------
Please refer to the instructions in the INSTALL file.
Driver options
--------------
Please refer to the foomatic documentation and/or your spooler's
documentation, how to speficy driver options in conjunction with
a particular spooler.
For instance with CUPS, you can preset the default options for
a particular printer queue in the "Configure Printer" dialog
of the CUPS web interface, or you can also override individual
options for one particular print job at the "lp" command line, like
lp -d myprinter -o MediaType=Carton -o ColorProfile=Photo ...
Options supported by the m2300w driver:
PageSize ............ Select the page size.
Default: A4
A4 .............. Select A4 paper.
A5 .............. Select A5 paper.
Legal ........... Select Legal paper.
Letter .......... Select Letter paper.
MediaType ........... Select the media type (analog to the Windows
driver). According to the printer docs, for paper
up to 90g/m2, use "Standard", for paper thicker
than 90g/m2, use "Carton". Otherwise, use the
type which corresponds to your medium. Selecting
a wrong type may damage the fuser.
Default: Standard
Carton .......... Select "Carton" media type.
Envelope ........ Select "Envelope" media type.
Labels .......... Select "Labels" media type.
Letterhead ...... Select "Letterhead" media type.
Postcard ........ Select "Postcard" media type.
Standard ........ Select "Standard" media type.
Transparency .... Select "Transparency" media type.
Multipage ........... Select the printing of several logical pages on
a single sheet of paper (n-up printing). The
program "psnup" needs to be installed on your
system in order that you can use this feature.
Default: none
none ............ Disable n-up printing.
2up ............. Print two pages on one sheet.
4up ............. Print four pages on one sheet.
PrintoutMode ........ Allows the selection of the most common
print modes with a single option.
Default: Auto
Auto ............ Automatically detects pages containing black
text only, and print such pages in B/W, all
other pages are printed in color.
Gray ............ Force printing in grayscale.
Photo ........... Print in color using the "Photo" color profile.
Draft ........... Economy mode to save toner, approx. newspaper
quality.
Draft.Gray ...... Grayscale economy mode.
Quality ............. Selects the print quality.
Default: @PrintoutMode
@PrintoutMode ... Controlled by PrintoutMode
Normal .......... Normal print quality.
Draft ........... Economy mode to save toner. The option ColorProfile
is ignored with Quality=Draft - there exists only
a single color profile for draft mode.
ColorMode ........... Selects B/W or color printing
Default: @PrintoutMode
@PrintoutMode ... Controlled by PrintoutMode
Gray ............ Force printing in grayscale
Color ........... Print in color
ColorProfile ........ Select the color profile (CRD) to use.
The included color profiles have been made for
"Premium Choice Laser Paper" CHP410, using
the "MediaType=Carton" option, and therefore
will give the best color reproduction on this
paper brand. However, the profiles work reasonalby
well for other paper types too (e.g. normal copier
paper).
The option ColorProfile is ignored in conjunction
with "Quality=Draft", there exists only a single
color profile for draft mode.
Default: @PrintoutMode
@PrintoutMode ... Controlled by PrintoutMode
AutoColor ....... Automatically detects pages containing black
text only, and print such pages in B/W, all
other pages are printed in color. This slightly
impacts the darkness of black and dark colors,
since black is printed with black toner only.
Photo ........... Optimized for printing photos, produces deep,
dark colors. The black generation uses as much
black toner as possible.
Photo-kh ........ Another profile optimized for printing photos.
The black generation uses less black toner than
'Photo'. The 'Photo' mode will give more neutral
grayscales, but for some images, 'Photo-kh' may
look more pleasing. Judge yourself and choose the
photo mode you like better.
None ............ Turn off CIE-based color matching. This setting
is useful, if you want to print test charts for
making your own color profiles using 3rd party
software. It is rather not useful otherwise.
User[1-5] ....... User defined CRD #1-5. This settings requires
that you supply your self-made CRD files as
/usr/share/m2300w/<version>/psfiles/User[1-5].crd
DefRGB .............. This option defines, how /DeviceRGB colors
in printed PostScript documents are interpreted,
i.e. which RGB color space is assumed for these
RGB colors.
(Actually I wanted to call this option "DefaultRGB"
to comply with the PostScript terminology, but
CUPS does not like option names starting with
the prefix "Default")
Default: sRGB
sRGB ............ IEC 61966-2.1 Default RGB colour space - sRGB
AdobeRGB ........ Adobe RGB (1998)
gimp-print ...... Use this setting if you are printing an sRGB
image from gimp (using the File->Print dialog).
Unfortunately, gimp mangles the image colors
during printing, and using this option setting
attempts to compensate for that.
builtin ......... Does not install a CSA for DefaultRGB, but use
Ghostscript's builtin default (which is rather
unspecific, since it is not documented which
color space ghostscript assumes by default).
Debug ............... Select the debug level.
Default: off
off ............. Turn off debugging output.
1 ............... Select debug level 1.
2 ............... Select debug level 2.
3 ............... Select debug level 3.
Ghostscript issues
------------------
Please refer to README.ghostscript or to
http://m2300w.sourceforge.net/gs/
Restrictions
------------
* Currently only the high (1200x600) resolution is supported
* Color profiles need to be revised for grayscale printing
* There is no status monitor available, see (1)
* Printing with the Duplex Unit is not supported, see (1)
* Replacing consumables (toner) is not supported by the driver,
but needs to be done under Windows, see (1)
* In order to recover from an error condition (yellow error lamp
on the printer) it is mostly necessary to cancel the print job
and to turn the printer off, and then on again after a short
pause, see (1).
An exception is "out of paper", in this case you just need to
refill the paper tray, and then the print job will continue.
* DO NOT press the "Cancel" button on the printer, otherwise
the printer will end up in an error condition (yellow lamp),
see (1)
* DO NOT submit print jobs while the printer is turned off or
while the printer is still warming up, otherwise either your
print job will be lost, or the printer may even end up in
an error condition (yellow lamp), see (1)
On the other hand, it is not a problem to submit a new print
job when the printer has entered energy saving mode. The printer
wakes up, when the new job arrives, see (1)
Footnote (1):
It is not likely that this restriction can be removed in the near
future, since this would require bidirectional communication with
the printer and decoding/reverse-engneering of the protocol spoken
between the driver and the printer.
Debugging and reporting problems of the m2300w driver
-----------------------------------------------------
Please report problems at http://sourceforge.net/projects/m2300w/
For debugging purposes, m2300w-wrapper creates the following file
in your /tmp directory:
- /tmp/m2300w.log
If a debug level >= 2 is selected, additionally the following
files are created:
- /tmp/m2300w_gsout.pbm
- /tmp/m2300w.prn
Please always attach /tmp/m2300w.log to your bug report.
Please also save /tmp/m2300w_gsout.pbm and /tmp/m2300w.prn, since
we might need them for the diagnosis of your problem. If we need
these files, we'll let you know. But don't attach them a priori
to the bug report, since these files are VERY LARGE.
IMPORTANT SECURITY ADVISORY:
/tmp/m2300w_gsout.pbm and /tmp/m2300w.prn contain the data
of your last print job. Do not send them, if your print
job did contain confident data.
CUPS debugging:
If there are problems in conjunction with CUPS, it can be
useful to turn on CUPS debugging by setting "LogLevel debug"
in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. It is necessary to restart CUPS after
modifying this file. The debugging output will appear in
/var/log/cups/error_log.