Kyocera's color laser printer PPD files broken

sorry: not device... meant cups frontend

Can you please attach the PPD file (/etc/cups/ppd/FS-C5100DN.ppd)?

Can you also create an error_log of one of your print job which produces the mentioned, wrong result? Please proceed as described in the "CUPS error_log" section of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems

Thanks.

Johannes, have you set KPDL emulation under Print Settings of the operation panel of your printer?

It was set to auto... Now that I've switched it on, the result looks like this:

Error Name: /undefined

Offending Command: HUE3,0;@PJL

Operand Stack:

(In the menu i've seen, that the printer also understands PCL 6 - perhaps I may use this as a workaround.)

Problem is this "HUE3,0;" in the beginning, we must find out from where this comes.

The PJL/JCL options defined in the PPD are inserted into the PostScript output for a PostScript printer by the pstops CUPS filter (called from cpdftocps). So I run this command line on Jaunty and Karmic:

cat /usr/share/system-config-printer/testpage-a4.ps | PPD=FS-C5100DN.ppd /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops 1 1 1 1 "" > x

Jaunty:

ESC%-12345X@PJL
@PJL JOB NAME = "1" DISPLAY = "1 1 1"
@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY = "1 1 1"
@PJL SET KTRAPPING=2
!R!CRES;SCRN0;RGBL0,0;RGBL1,0;RGBL2,0;HUE0,0;HUE1,0;HUE2,0;HUE3,0;HUE4,0;HUE5,0;HUE6,0;LGHT0,0;LGHT1,0;SATU0;EXIT;ESC%-12345X@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=POSTSCRIPT
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Title: PPR Test Page
%%DocumentNeededResources: font Helvetica
%%For: (1)
...

Karmic:

ESC%-12345X@PJL
@PJL JOB NAME = "1" DISPLAY = "1 1 1"
!R!CRES;SCRN0;@PJL SET KTRAPPING=2
RGBL2,0;RGBL0,0;RGBL1,0;HUE0,0;HUE6,0;HUE5,0;HUE1,0;HUE2,0;LGHT1,0;LGHT0,0;HUE4,0;SATU0;EXIT;ESC%-12345XHUE3,0;@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=POSTSCRIPT
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Title: PPR Test Page
%%DocumentNeededResources: font Helvetica
%%For: (1)
...

Here one sees that the header is put together in a wronmg order.

Problem is in the CUPS library, same happens if one tries the above with the pdftopdf filter applied to a PDF file.

Can you apply the patch to your PPD file:

cd /etc/cups/ppd/
sudo /etc/init.d/cups stop
patch -p0 < FS-C5100DN.ppd.patch
sudo /etc/init.d/cups start

Can you print now?

Yes it works. In the meanwhile I've printed with a generic PCL6 driver but it's much more convenient with the original PPD.
Thank you very much!
Is this PPD that special? Won't this happen with other printers too?

This PPD is really special, and probably most other PPDs for PostScript printers made by Kyocera (KPDL printers). The bug is in the PPD. All Kyocera PPDs need to be fixed as shown in the patch.

Fixed upstream in foomatic-db BZR revision 995.

Note that CUPS is not the culprit, as the problem, are here options in the PPD file whose code gets inserted in the wrong order. To assure the right order there are the *OrderDependency: lines in the PPD and the code is inserting in ascending order of the numbers. The problem of the Kyocera PPDs is that options which require a determined order have equal numbers in their *OrderDependency: lines, which gives no determined order according to the Adobe specs for PPDs. I have corrected the numbers in the mentioned upstream fix.

This bug was fixed in the package foomatic-db - 20090825-0ubuntu4

---------------
foomatic-db (20090825-0ubuntu4) karmic; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/kyocera-ppd-jcl-fix.patch: Corrected OrderDependency
    numbers for the JCL options so that the JCL code is definitely inserted
    in the correct order (LP: #442451).

 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:53:23 +0200

I have also informed Kyocera about the problem so that they fix the PPDs on their site, too, and issue correct PPDs for future models.