printing in stone age?

[=X¥®µ§=]

I have a HP DeskJet 970 Cxi, and I installed it like the manual said...

However when I want to print stuff, I don't get any options to print eg 2 pages on 1, to print both sides of the paper,...
I also noted that printing takes a huge ammount of time...

Is it really so that printing is marginal compared to windows? Is it the programs that give me a bad printing application, or is it really the driver?

And shouldn't hpijs do that job? Now I can only choose between the ESP HP Deskjet driver, or with gimp-print-cups installed, I can also choose a HP Deskjet 900 series driver...

I hope someone can answer this, if not, then I'm obligated to always print everything in windows
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[mksoft]

KDE's printing system coupled with cups allows you all of this and more. From where are you trying to print

If you have kde base and cups installed, you can set kprinter as you printing program (intead of lpr for example) in case you're not printing from kde apps.
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[kybber]

According to http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=186729 the hpijs driver supports duplex printing.

Don't know about KDE, but using cups you can easily get duplex printing (http://localhost:631, Manage Printers, Configure Printer, Double-sided printing On). Two pages or more on one can be done using mpage (emerge mpage).

Perhaps the reason printing is slow under Linux is that postscript is being used? At least that's been my experience in Windows: Postscript drivers are slower then other drivers (but produce a more consistent result).

[=X¥®µ§=]

kybber: you're right, when I selected the 'new deskjet series', an option appeared to enable duplex printing... but it's still an ESP driver, shouldn't I be able to select the hpijs driver or something???

mkdoft:
you're right too, in Opera, I was able to select kprint as printer program, and it even worked until it had to print, it sais something like 'can't print from STDIN (with option --stdin), please specify a file to print' -> so unless you know what I can do about this, it's useless...

now then I tried printing in (gtk) anjuta, no luck, when I select kprint instead of lpr, it doesn't do anything...

kate could print (I tried 2 pages on one, and the result was extremely ugly, so even if it's printing postscript, it's not a more consistent result - I'm sure I'm doing something wrong again), and I'm sure that all other kde programs can...

abiword always crashed when I used kprint...(but the tutorial already said so)

openoffice doesn't let me choose for kprint

....

ok you get the point
what am I doing wrong here?
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[mksoft]

The correct command shoud be:

[kybber]

If you follow the instruction in the gentoo printing guide (using foomatic etc), you should be able to select and use the hpijs driver with no trouble.

For those cases where kprinter won't work, try to exchange 'lpr' with 'mpage -2 -t -Pprintername'. That should give you two pages per sheet in duplex mode.

[=X¥®µ§=]

very, very weird
I did follow the manual, but there's no list to select my printer from

now I did the foomatic-configure part again, and the already existing printer suddenly uses the foomatic+hpijs driver, but when I add new printers, I still can't select anything but the ESP drivers...

if linux is missing one thing, it's a printer standard, so all apps automatically provide you with the same printer dialog (and if you print, it's in the quality+speed your expensive printer supports), and it should be a lot easier to setup printers :/
but I'm sure I'm doing stuff wrong
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[kybber]

I'm afraid I can't remember exactly how I did this myself. But as you point out, in cups you can not select the printer driver you configured through foomatic. However, if you have entered the correct name for your printer (i.e. the same name as the printer queue you selected in foomatic-configure), you should be all set with the foomatic-driver. Don't rely on this 100%, but I think this is at least quite close to the truth... Anyone else?

[=X¥®µ§=]

yes, I guesse that's why it worked...
for linux to become popular with the big mass, there should be a standard in printing, it's way too complicated now... (cups, ghostscript, hpijs, kprint,... and even then only the kde apps give you a decent printing dialog...) kde, gnome, redhat, linus,... and all the other major linux players should cooporate in getting a standard... others will follow then
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