[Gimp-user] Printing issue

2009-07-23 Thread Erik Lotspeich
Hi,

I have OpenSUSE 11.1 and Gimp 2.6.2.  I am having a serious problem with
printing that I cannot figure out.

For background, I've used Gimp since 1997 and I'm no novice to Gimp,
Linux, or Unix.

That being said, I found the printing in Gimp 2.2 to be near perfect.
It worked perfectly and had a feature to auto-fit the image to the
correct paper size.  Image rotation (landscape/portrait) was never an issue.

I find the printing interface in Gimp 2.6.2 to be a complete failure in
terms of both interface and functionality.  Here are links to some
screenshots:

https://joomla.lotspeich.org/~erik/gimp-print-fail.png
https://joomla.lotspeich.org/~erik/gimp-image-properties.png

I would like to know why the width and height do not correspond to any
reasonable value.  I set my paper size to 4x6 borderless on an HP
OfficeJet 6110.  Printing on this printer works perfectly in other
programs; I'm using hplip and CUPS.

Why is there no auto-resize like there is in Gimp 2.2?

Why is the X and Y resolution pegged to 1133.948?  Why won't it let me
set this value?

The preview does not correspond in any way to my paper size (see the
huge border on the bottom!).

I'm sorry to sound upset by this issue, but I'm completely shocked that
a wonderful program like Gimp would have such a complete regression.
I'm using the distro version of Gimp (OpenSUSE); I haven't tried to
compile the latest version from source.

I also tried Gimp for Windows on my wife's Windows Vista computer.
Printing here is just as much of a failure.  On Windows, it's actually
worse since the page setup options that Gimp provides conflict with the
printer driver's settings (e.g. paper size, rotation, etc.).  I tried
all permutations of portrait/landscape and could never find a way to
print correctly.

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Erik
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Re: [Gimp-user] Printing issue

2009-07-24 Thread Erik Lotspeich
Hi Joao,

I very much appreciate your measured response to my rant! ;)

I installed the Gutenprint plugin and printing works exactly as I would
expect it to.  Your suggestion really saved the day for me and I
appreciate it greatly!


For the record, I find it absurd that Gimp has two parallel printing
systems.  The default system, although it can glean printer and
paper-size information from CUPS, is clearly broken and lacks features
necessary to print photographs and other media effectively (or, in many
cases, at all!).

Gutenprint has necessary features like auto-orientation, color
correction, ability to auto-size images, etc. but lacks integration with
CUPS.  It is necessary to use RAW mode or have the PPD available and
print PostScript to obtain decent results.  This is also non-ideal since
CUPS already has the PPD and you need to reference it again for
Gutenprint (sometimes this means having the PPD both on the local
machine and on the remote print server).

The fact that the Gimp engineers haven't integrated these two printing
systems is unacceptable -- they should be ashamed.  Gimp will never be
taken seriously until this printing nightmare is resolved.  I am a
software engineer myself, so it's not like I'm speaking simply from a
user point-of-view.

Regards,

Erik.


Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:
> On Friday 24 July 2009, Erik Lotspeich wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have OpenSUSE 11.1 and Gimp 2.6.2.  I am having a serious problem with
>> printing that I cannot figure out.
>>
>> For background, I've used Gimp since 1997 and I'm no novice to Gimp,
>> Linux, or Unix.
>>
>> That being said, I found the printing in Gimp 2.2 to be near perfect.
>> It worked perfectly and had a feature to auto-fit the image to the
>> correct paper size.  Image rotation (landscape/portrait) was never an
>> issue.
> (...)
> 
> Hi Erik - 
> those features are now maintained in the external "gutenprint" (formerly 
> "gimp-print" ) project;. Please search you r distro packages for gutenprint
> gimp related packages, and the printing plgu-in with the itnerface you are 
> used to (and the features you are needing) should become available.
> 
>   js
>   -><-
> 
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Re: [Gimp-user] Printing issue

2009-07-25 Thread Erik Lotspeich
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Hi Chris,

I appreciate your feedback.  Looking at the history of gutenprint only
solidifies my point which is:

Native Gimp printing = FAIL
Gutenprint (Gimp plug-in) = WIN

My distro is OpenSUSE 11.1 which is a popular, modern Linux distribution
backed by a large company.  I have all the updates.

The fact is that it is the Gimp maintainers who have failed to provide a
working printing system.  Surely, you aren't asserting that the
Gutenprint folks are responsible for Gimp's broken native printing
system... the Gimp folks need to deliver a complete piece of software.
They have nobody to blame but themselves for the current mess.

Gutenprint provides a printing system that works.  The OpenSUSE folks
have NOTHING to do with the fact that Gimp's printing is all but
non-functional.

I'm quite sick of this attitude in the Linux community that distro
maintainers are responsible for broken software.  The truth is that the
distro maintainers are constantly patching and making up for the
inadequacies of the upstream source packages to try to cobble something
together that works.  They often don't succeed.

Regards,

Erik.

Chris Mohler wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Erik Lotspeich wrote:
> 
>> The fact that the Gimp engineers haven't integrated these two printing
>> systems is unacceptable -- they should be ashamed.  Gimp will never be
>> taken seriously until this printing nightmare is resolved.  I am a
>> software engineer myself, so it's not like I'm speaking simply from a
>> user point-of-view.
> 
> Please go here and read the history/purpose of gutenprint (below the news):
> http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Then direct your rant at whoever is packaging your distro ;)
> 
> Chris
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Re: [Gimp-user] Printing issue

2009-07-25 Thread Erik Lotspeich
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Hi Gene,

Your point is well taken.  I do not expect the Gimp people to keep on
top of printing at all.

But why not have Gutenprint be a pre-requisite to Gimp?  Why deliver a
broken default printing system?

For the record, my distro does deliver the Gutenprint Gimp plug-in, but
it wasn't installed by default.  As I mentioned before, this is not a
distro issue.

Software should "just work".  We should all be moving toward this goal.

Gene Heskett wrote:
> Those of us who've used Gimp for the last half decade and more, just know 
> that 
> we should also pull in gutenprint, or if your distro doesn't have it, build 
> it 
> from the tarball, its not THAT difficult.

In my opinion, this attitude is completely wrong.  Gimp needs to work
out-of-the-box.  As I mentioned, I used Gimp for many years and I was
caught by surprise by this Gutenprint thing.

Just imagine a novice Linux user.  Imagine your mother-in-law who wants
to print a photo with Gimp.  She will fail.  That is my point.  I think
that you all are missing the point that I'm making.  Your mother-in-law
will be confused by "Print" and "Print with Gutenprint".  Nobody has to
worry about this garbage with Photoshop -- the user does File->Print and
it "just works".  Us open-source guys are smart talented people.  Let's
make software that actually works and is easy-to-use.

Regards,

Erik.
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Re: [Gimp-user] Printing issue

2009-07-27 Thread Erik Lotspeich
Hi Norman,

I guess that it is possible your theory is correct and that this is the
motivation.

Since printing with Gimp on Vista does not work properly, it calls this
theory into question, however.

Regards,

Erik

Norman Silverstone wrote:
> < snip >
> 
>> Just imagine a novice Linux user.  Imagine your mother-in-law who wants
>> to print a photo with Gimp.  She will fail.  That is my point.  I think
>> that you all are missing the point that I'm making.  Your mother-in-law
>> will be confused by "Print" and "Print with Gutenprint".  Nobody has to
>> worry about this garbage with Photoshop -- the user does File->Print and
>> it "just works".  Us open-source guys are smart talented people.  Let's
>> make software that actually works and is easy-to-use.
> 
> I have tried to follow this discussion because I also have had printing
> problems over the years. Could part of the need for 2 possible 'print'
> selections be because of the need to please Windows as well as Linux
> users?
> 
> Norman
> 
> 
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Re: [Gimp-user] Scaling a foto

2009-08-17 Thread Erik Lotspeich
Hi Monika,

I haven't experienced a loss in quality with scaling photos smaller; as
you mentioned, loss of quality will occur with enlargements.

Are you scaling before you crop the photos?  How are you scaling (I
scale with Image->Scale Image).  What are your original & target sizes?

Regards,

Erik.

Monika Himpelmann wrote:
> Dear all,
> I have a question and maybe it is easy to answer and has been answered
> before although I didn't find it in the FAQ's.
> 
> When I try to scale a foto in order to get it passport photo size it
> looses quality. The fotos I want to scale are of good quality but too
> large and are showing not only the head and upper chest of people but
> often more and so I have to cut them which is possible without any
> problem and then scale them in the format I need.
> 
> I would understand the loss in quality if I would try to enlarge the
> fotos but making them smaller in size should not make them loose quality???
> 
> Any hints from you out there?
> Thank you in advance for any answer.
> 
> Best wishes
> Monika
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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