Gimp-Print 4.3.19, released August 8, 2003, is a development release of this package. Like all development releases, this version is considered unstable and should only be used by those individuals tolerant of the likelihood of problems. Individuals desiring a stable release of Gimp-Print should use the latest 4.2 release.

Gimp-Print is a suite of printer drivers that may be used with most common UNIX print spooling systems, including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others. These drivers provide high quality printing for UNIX (including Macintosh OS X 10.2 and newer) and Linux systems in many cases equal to or better than proprietary vendor-supplied drivers, and can be used for many of the most demanding printing tasks.

This software includes the Print plug-in for the Gimp, and Ghostscript and CUPS drivers, including Foomatic data.

The Print plugin for the Gimp requires the Gimp 1.2 (later versions of the Gimp are not supported). You may need to install a package named "gimp-devel" or the like on many distributions.

The CUPS driver requires CUPS 1.1.15 or higher. You may need to install a package named "cups-devel" or the like on many distributions.

The Foomatic data will work with either Foomatic 2.x or 3.x. Foomatic 3.x has additional capabilities that this package detects and takes advantage of.

The IJS-based GhostScript plugin driver requires GNU Ghostscript 6.53 or later, ESP Ghostscript 7.05 or later, or APFL GhostScript 7.04 or later.

Users of Macintosh OS X 10.2 and above can use this package, as the printing system is based on CUPS, which is supported by Gimp-print. Note that Macintosh OS X 10.0 and 10.1 (including 10.1.5) cannot use this package.

Please read the README file for full instructions on installing this package.

Gimp-Print 4.3.19 contains the following major changes over Gimp-Print 4.3.18:

1) An ImageType setting has been added, with several settings for common types of image (text, graphics, photograph, mixed). This setting controls a bundle of other options, considerably simplifying the available choices. The Manual Control setting enables setting the individual options.

2) The ImageOptimization setting has been renamed ColorCorrection. The main effect of this is that settings for the ImageOptimization control in the GIMP plugin will not be carried forward from 4.3.18; they will need to be changed back.

3) The Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black controls have been renamed CyanGamma, MagentaGamma, YellowGamma, and BlackGamma to avoid technically illegal constructs in the PPD files.

4) Preliminary support for the Epson Stylus Photo 935, C43SX, C43UX, C44SX, and C44UX.

5) The cups-genppdupdate script and PPD files are fixed such that cups-genppdupdate will work in future releases. The script relies upon new information in the PPD files, so the script will not correctly update PPD files from 4.3.18. However, going forward the script will operate correctly.

In addition, the cups-genppdupdate script no longer requires the non-standard Compress:Zlib perl module.

6) Color quality has been improved substantially for Epson printers.

7) The CUPS driver (rastertoprinter) now prefixes all messages with "Gimp-Print: " to simplify recognition of messages in the CUPS error log.

8) The Quality setting now controls additional options in the core (dithering and color correction).

9) The escputil utility has been changed to use the core package for its printer information database, so all Epson printers recognized by the core package will now be recognized by escputil. In addition, the -d option now prints out only the printer model name rather than the entire status line, and adds an option to print out only the short name. Finally, certain cases where escputil did not wait correctly for output from the printer have been fixed.

10) The XML code has been updated to mxml 1.1.2.

11) A bug in the curve code whereby rescaling wraparound curves increases the number of points has been fixed.

12) Constraints have been added to the PPD files such that using grayscale or black and white mode, or using the Quality or Image Type settings, will disable certain options.

13) Support and tuning for Epson Watercolor - Radiant White paper has been added for printers using Ultrachrome ink (matte black). In addition, Premium Luster and Premium Semigloss papers have been tuned on most printers.