Hello everyone,

All is in the title. Do you think or consider that TurboPrint should or should not still be present in MorphOS ? Are any of you using it with a supported printer or not ? Apart from what is present in MorphOS it is possible to find on the internet, on an FTP site at least, TurboPrint latest version for amiga in adf or dms disk image. It is also possible to obtain the printer drivers only on the IrseeSoft site in their archive in tar.gz format for Linux. What do you think about the possibility of TurboPrint being attached to the Contributions directory in the form of an archive or something else ?

I don't know how to present this in the form of a survey but express yourself freely on this subject.

Brumiga

> Do you think or consider that TurboPrint should or should not
> still be present in MorphOS ? […] What do you think about the
> possibility of TurboPrint being attached to the Contribution
> directory in the form of an archive or something else ?

I actually think that not installing TurboPrint by default but instead relegating it to Contributions for later and optional installation is a good idea. This would help promote the new (well, since MorphOS 3.10 from almost 6 years ago) printing system and raise its awareness. My impression here on MorphZone has been that both being present concurrently is a source of confusion for users.
Are there (m)any printers from the last decade that don't work with the new printing system but do work with TurboPrint?

I'm still using it when printing from old programs like Final Writer. About 50-50 with TurboPrint and the new printing system in my use. There aren't many word processors or graphics programs that could output to the new system... you'll have to get data converted to PDF or HTML to be able to print with the new system currently. Or plain text with FlowStudio I guess..

So, I would keep TurboPrint in MorphOS, at least until there will be a solution to get the new system working from old programs. Are you suggesting removing it, because it's a bit confusing for users to have two different printing systems?

I'm afraid anything put into the Contributions directory will go under the radar for the most, and users would just think that they can't print from the old programs at all... at least I had forgotten that we have such an directory on the installation media :) It doesn't even have an icon to be seen. It should be copied on the system partition so that users would find/remember it.

[ Edited by jPV 04.12.2023 - 17:19 ]

I use it very regularly every week.

So my vote is yes...

Many pogs cannot print postscript - for those, TP is the only way to printout. Laserprinters, which can understand PCL, are well useable with TP (HP Laserjet-drivers).
There also some other (modern) bitmap-printers, which are usable by included (old) drivers in TP, such as A3-printing with an HP-7110 (which I use too). In some cases, slight modifications of TP-driver is needed (these are only ASCII-files), like higher resolutione, etc.

As long as the new printing system from Zukow cannot handle this printers, TP is needed to be installed.

I think all the options are good, but it is true that I find the MorphOS printer system a bit confusing.
Maybe it's because I haven't had to deal with it very often and I only do it sporadically, but that is precisely the main problem...new people who want to use it.

Yeah, it's a bit confusing for someone new. There are two printing systems - one for (older) bitmap-printers (with some drivers!!) and the new, unversal postscript system.
On a PC all Printers are delivered with there own drivers, which we don't have. So TP will be needed further on, as long as all printers cannot understand PS (which never will happen, I think)
And I don't think that Mos-team will combine both systems (GUI's) in one system together.......

Even CUPS uses TurboPrint as a subssytem

Fun fact. In the 90s I had a Seikosha SL96 that came with its own print manager called Seikoshaprefs by Wolf Faust, which was basically Turboprint for just that printer. Turboprint itself did not support it. (In fact, I wasn't able to use that printer with anything else, even a PC, except by using far inferior SL95 Windows-95 drivers, which were horrible and had dot gain issues.)

Amusingly, I was able to get MorphOS to print with it to the Pegasos parallel port by copying its printer.device over to MorphOS.

There will always be a need for this as long as not every printer handles PS or we still use older software that outputs to printer.device.

[ Edited by KennyR 08.12.2023 - 19:43 ]

> TP will be needed […] as long as all printers cannot understand PS

The new printing system can output to non-PS printers as long as they understand at least one of the following languages:

- PCL5 (HP and various others)
- ESC/P-R (Epson, NEC)
- SPL2/SPLc (Samsung, Xerox)
- Brother's proprietary language

> There will always be a need for this as long as not every printer handles PS

No, see above.

@KennyR:
Funny! I had (have) a Seikosha SL92. This one works fine with TP-driver for the Seikosha SL80-AI. Should also do with an SL96.

Quote:

Nothing worked, except SL95, which TP didn't support either. Seikosha must have had some really weird custom bitmap parsing for its last two dot matrix printers, and wasn't Epson compatible in the slightest. The SL96 was a 360x360 dpi dot matrix, which pushed that technology as far as it was likely to go, but inkjets were already appearing and could print a sheet without taking three quarters of an hour to do so. (That is not an exaggeration.)

Oftentimes you can print just by emailing a pdf or jpg to your own printer, without even needing to convert to PS or PCL. I don't think anyone still uses dot matrices except maybe as simple line printers, and only in very specific niches (I used to use one to print off ELISA results in my research assistant position in the naughties). A lot more likely someone will still use applications that use printer.device.

A bit late, but SL96 should work with TP EPSON LQ-Drivers. Technical data says that he can read Epson LQ870 ESC-codes.

(German Magazine with test of SL96-Color: https://www.google.at/url?esrc=s&q=&rct=j&sa=U&url=https://www.retropoly.de/c64er/1994/64er_1994-11.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwis6t3ssOSEAxUxgv0HHbXDCUYQFnoECAQQAg&usg=AOvVaw39LrurLzwCUVHEBhpgl6rb)