Running CUPS with some printing devices, like HP X451DW and HP OfficeJet Colour Pro 8600-n911a, I used to use the port printing/hplip to provide the proper driver/ppd files. Today I figured out, that the must have been some changes during the past months to this port, since my OfficeJet 8600 was capable of producing high quality printouts with a proper driver, either hp-officejet_pro_8600.ppd.gz or hp-officejet_pro_8600-hpijs.ppd.gz. With the recent port printing/hplip (hplip-3.16.10), ports tree r426563, I miss these two PPD drivers amongst others. They are present in the source picked up by fetch, but they never get installed - a "find" confirms their non-existence. What I'm missing here? The port definitely installs only a subset of the provided drivers one can find in hpcups and hpijs subfolders of the extracted tarball.
The PPD file is automatically generated when you setup a printer. You don't have to browse for one.
(In reply to Tijl Coosemans from comment #1) Hi Tijl, The previous person that mentioned this did indeed find that the driver was automatically generated when they added the printer with the cups web interface at http://localhost:631/. Do you know if this is also the case if someone tries to add the printer with the hplip graphical interface? The way the other person described it, it sounded like it was making them browse for a driver which didn't exist. Thanks, Ben
(In reply to Ben Woods from comment #2) Yes, the graphical interface uses something like "drv://hpcups.drv" as PPD by default. Just leave it unchanged and it will generate the right PPD file.
O. Hartmann: can you please confirm that it works for you with the auto generated driver?
(In reply to Ben Woods from comment #4) B. Woods: I can confirm the following: I was able prior to this mess to produce quality printing output using "HP Officejet Pro 8600 hpijs, 3.14.4". Now I have to use "HP Officejet Pro 8600, hpcups 3.16.10". Selecting the proper printer via manual load of PPD via webinterface or by command line delegating to the correct ppd file doesn't work anymore, because the Office Jet Pro 8600_n911a ppd isn't available in the hplip port on FreeBSD. Selecting the driver in the selection box produces crap on photo printouts - this is unprofessional crap! hpjis and hplip are mutual exclusive ports. How am I considered to solve a problem on a cups server with both worlds of printers, PS/PDF and PCL?
The hpijs PPD for your printer seems to print at 1200DPI by default. With the hpcups PPD you need to set "Print Quality" to "High-Resolution Photo" to get that. (If you are printing on glossy paper you probably also want to set "Media Type" to "Photo Paper".)
This was fixed with the recent update to hplip 3.17.11 in the ports head branch via commit r457127. (the share/ppd/HP/hp-officejet_pro_8600.ppd.gz file is now installed by the print/hplip port). Given that the 2018Q1 ports tree will branched in a few days, no need to MFH. https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/print/hplip/pkg-plist?r1=450329&r2=457127