Most Linux programs that have a print dialog option automatically show all printers that have been set up. Many programs also allow to examine and modify the current printer driver settings.
Only few programs like GIMP and Firefox are an exception – here the user has to add a printer before using it for the first time (GIMP) or there is no access to printer driver settings (Firefox). Such programs are covered in separate sections at the end of this chapter.
A specialty of Linux – compared to other operating systems like Windows or Mac OS – is that the print dialog and especially printer driver settings can look quite different in different applications. One reason is that application programmers can use the print dialog from one of the application frameworks (like Gnome or KDE) or program their own print dialogs. Another reason is that there is no standard dialog box for driver settings that a driver could make available to applications.
TODO - general section on: how do the driver settings look like in the application print dialog
All programs that were programmed using the KDE application framework – like Konqueror or digiKam – have the same print dialog. First select your printer:
With the button "Properties" you can examine or modify print settings:
The printer driver settings can be found on the index page "Driver settings". To change a setting, click on an item in the list (e.g. "Print quality") – in the lower part of the window a list of possible settings will appear. Click on the setting of your choice.
Applications that are based on the Gnome desktop also have a uniform print dialog – Gnome applications are e.g. Evolution, gThumb or eyeofGnome. The print dialog shows all printers that have been set up on the computer:
The index card "Page Setup" contains the "Paper type" and "Paper source" settings:
On the index card "Image Quality" you can change the print quality, the index card "Advanced" contains all other printer driver settings:
In the LibreOffice / OpenOffice print dialog choose your printer next to the field "Name":
In the dialog "Properties..." you can inspect or adjust printer settings:
You can find other printer driver settings on the index card „Device“:
The settings "PostScript Level", "Color" and "Color depth" should be left at their default values "from driver" and "24 Bit" (see screenshot).
In the dialog "Options..." there is an option for printing brochures with two pages on one sheet. In combination with TurboPrint's duplex function you can print booklets – you only have to fold the printed stack of paper after printing on both sides.
During installation of TurboPrint optionally a print dialog for GIMP can be installed, which has enhancements for TurboPrint. This dialog can be opened from GIMP with the menu entry "File -> TurboPrint...".
The special print dialog automatically lists all TurboPrint printers – choose the printer you want to print with in the list "Printer Name".
The driver settings "Media Type", "Print Quality", "Color Mode", "RGB Color Space" and "Page Size" can be selected directly in the print dialog, for other settings use the button "TurboPrint Config".
Note: The GIMP print dialog maintains its own print settings, changes made in TurboPrint Control Center or TurboPrint Monitor are ignored. Always use the button “TurboPrint Config” to change print settings.
A special feature of the TurboPrint print dialog is the possibility to scale images to more than 100%, so that the a section of the image that fills the whole page is printed.
The button "Borderless Image Size" will set the scaling factor automatically so that the image fills the page completely and no white margins will remain on the printout.
Note: The TurboPrint print dialog for GIMP is a modified version of the original GIMP/Gutenprint dialog (version gutenprint-5.1.6) which was published under GNU General Public License Version 2. The version for TurboPrint is also published under GNU GPL V2, the sourcecode is available on our FTP server ftp.zedonet.com/gpturboprint.
In the Firefox print dialog choose the TurboPrint printer next to "Printer Name".
In the "Properties" dialog you can choose the paper size and modify page margins:
If headers or footers are cut off on the printout, you should increase the values for top and/or bottom margins.
Firefox doesn't offer any additional print settings. If you need to change settings like print quality, media type etc., you can change the printer default settings in the TurboPrint control center menu instead (see chapter " 8. TurboPrint print settings").
Some application programs print by executing a command line internally: The application creates a temporary file that contains the pages to be printed (usually in "Postscript" file format) and executes the lp or lpr command line program.
With some programs the command line can be edited – the user can specify the print command and the parameters e.g.
lp -d tp0 lpr -P tp0
(replace "tp0" by the actual name of the print queue).
Instead of lp you can also enter the KDE command
kprinter
or with the Gnome desktop the command
gtklp
kprinter or gtklp will open a window where you can choose the printer driver and inspect or modify print settings.
Note: You should first make sure that "kprinter" or "gtklp" is installed on your computer. Open a command line ("Terminal") and enter the command "kprinter" / "gtklp". If an error message like "Command not found" appears, you will have to install the program using the package manager of your Linux system first.