Read Me

This is Gimp-Print version 4.1.9, a development release in the 4.1
line.  Gimp-print is the print facility for the Gimp, and in addition
a suite of drivers that may be used with common UNIX spooling systems
using GhostScript or CUPS.  These drivers provide printing quality for
UNIX/Linux in many cases equal to or better than proprietary
vendor-supplied drivers, and can be used for many of the most
demanding printing tasks.

Please read this README, and the NEWS file carefully!  Many things
have changed from Gimp-Print 4.0.


BASIC INSTALLATION

If you have downloaded a .tar.gz file (tarball), you should follow
these directions.

To build and install the Gimp Print plug-in:

./configure
make
make install

This installs two programs: the print plugin itself (named "print") in
your system Gimp plugin directory, and a utility named "escputil" for
performing head cleaning, nozzle alignment, and other tasks on Epson
Stylus inkjet printers.  Type "escputil" for a description of the
options and functionality.

Please check our web site at http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net for
details about what is and is not supported.

Please report any problems to gimp-print-devel@sourceforge.net.

If you have installed the Gimp as a precompiled package (e. g. from an
RPM), you will need to install the gimp-devel package as well as the
gimp package.  The gimp package as supplied in most distributions only
contains what's needed to run the Gimp.  The gimp-devel package
contains additional files required to actually build new plugins.

If you have installed the Gimp from source on Linux: after running
make install, you must run ldconfig as root before attempting to build
this plugin.

Gimp-print 4.1 requires the Gimp 1.2.  As of Gimp-print 4.1.6, the
plugin will no longer compile against the Gimp 1.0 or 1.1.


GHOSTSCRIPT

This package includes a Ghostscript driver that may be built, allowing
use of this software for general printing purposes.  Please read
src/ghost/README for more information, including how to build and
install it, and available options; the build procedure here merely
creates the necessary source files that you must add to your
Ghostscript source.  To build the Ghostscript driver, you must run:

./configure --with-ghost
make
cd src/ghost

If you do not wish to build the Gimp Print plugin, you must run

./configure --with-ghost --without-gimp

Again, please be sure to read src/Ghost/README for the available
options, which may change from release to release.  In particular, the
source files may well change from release to release; be certain to
follow the directions PRECISELY for each release!


CUPS

This package includes a CUPS driver that may be built, allowing use of
this software for general printing purposes.  To build the CUPS
driver, you must run:

./configure --with-cups
make
make install
/etc/software/init.d/cups restart

The last command varies with OS.  It may be /etc/init.d/cups,
/etc/rc.d/cups, or even /etc/rc.d/init.d/cups.

If you do not wish to build the Gimp Print plugin, you must run

./configure --with-cups --without-gimp


FOOMATIC

This package includes support for the Foomatic meta-driver package.
This requires the foomatic-xml distribution.  Foomatic is available
from http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html.  It also will soon
(as of April 2001) be available in Debian unstable.  For best results,
use the version in cvs.

To build the Foomatic data, you must run:

./configure --with-foomatic
make
make install

The "make install" step will add the necessary data to your Foomatic
installation.  It will not create the spooler-specific data files; to
do that, you must follow this procedure:

     - examine the output of `foomatic-configure -O', and find the
       foomatic ID for your printer.

     - Run foomatic-datafile with that printer ID, the driver name
       'gimp-print', and the spooler type you wish to use.
       foomatic-datafile -h explains how to run this program.  It will
       generate a foomatic filter datafile on stdout.

     - This datafile may then be used instead of the ones from the
       linxuprinting.org website.  Follow the instructions for your
       spooler from the website to install the data file and filter.

Note that it almost never makes sense to build the Foomatic driver
without also building the Ghostscript driver.  Please read the
instructions above in the GHOSTSCRIPT section.

If you do not wish to build the Gimp Print plugin, you must run

./configure --with-foomatic --without-gimp

Please visit http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html for more
information on Foomatic.  The current Foomatic data was generated for
"Phase 2".


RECOMMENDED SETTINGS

We recommend starting with all default settings for the slider
adjustments in the Color Adjustment window.  The settings can be
adjusted as necessary for particular combinations of ink, paper, and
subject material.

We recommend use of the Adaptive Hybrid dithering algorithm in most
cases.  Users of four color printers may find that the Ordered
dithering algorithm is faster and produces nearly as good output.  Use
of this method is strongly discouraged on six color (photo) printers.

On most inkjet printers, 720 dpi will produce very high quality;
1440x720 dpi will produce extremely high quality.


SUPPORT

There are four principal ways of requesting support for this package:

1) There are public forums on Sourceforge dedicated to this package.
   Please see http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=1537 for more
   information.  The Help forum is a good source of information.

2) If you have a technical support issue that does not appear to be a
   bug in the software, you can use the Tech Support Manager.  Please
   see http://sourceforge.net/support/?group_id=1537.

3) If you have found a clear bug in the package, you may file a bug
   report at http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=1537.

4) You may send mail to the gimp-print-devel@sourceforge.net mailing
   list.  This is recommended as a last resort only.


DEBIAN

The Debian packaging has been rewritten from scratch as of 4.1.4. It
is compliant with Standards-Version 3.1.1, and is lintian-clean. It
should build from source on potato, woody and sid (the packages should
also work).  There are five separate packages:

gimp1.2-print		The GIMP Print plugin. Also contains HTML and SGML
			documentation that is registered with doc-base.
cupsys-driver-gimpprint The CUPS driver and PPD files.
libgimpprint		The libgimpprint library (GIMP-Print core).
libgimpprint-dev	Headers, symlinks, m4 macro (AM_PATH_GIMPPRINT)
			and gimpprint-config needed to develop programs
			that link with libgimpprint.
libgimpprint-doc	Documentation in Info, dvi and HTML format.
escputil		The escputil printer tool.

The library symlinks will get packaged without any modification needed
to the debian packaging whatever library versioning scheme is
used. Most packages depend on libgimpprint as this will provide
translations for i18n in the future that they will use, or they
require libgimpprint anyway.


INTERNATIONALIZATION

All translatable strings are marked in the source for libgimpprint.
Two translations are available: en_GB and en_TEST (the latter for
testing only).

TODO: make sure that the tagged strings are actually translated. This
will involve some modifications to the source such as dynamically
allocating memory to hold translated structures, instead of passing
back pointers to static data. Most things are now actually translated,
but there are a few bits left to do (some of which might be obscure).


USE OF THE CVS REPOSITORY

Please read doc/README.maintaining for instructions on how to build
from the CVS repository.