type something in pe and try
I did it. No print
file a ticket at haiku ticket tracker
āWhen issuing a ticket, write details about the equipmentāā¦ In this case, it will be a bureaucratic procedure. I am sure that the problem is related to the lack of drivers for the Canon LBP 3000 printer in the system. The driver for this printer is specific and it is essential for printing, but it simply does not exist. Selecting another printer from the list will not produce results because the drivers are incompatible. Itās my opinion
go file a ticket, could be as simple as a update to guetenprint which might need doing anyway.
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There are other Canon LBP models. My concern was PCL5/6 support as Canon mentions this LBP printer supports the PCL5/6 drivers - but I think it is either very specific LBP models and/or a Canon-modified āgenericā implementation of PCL5/6 drivers (i.e. a bit different than the ones provided with Haiku). Certain LBP printers require support for a auto-shutdown featureā¦
Anyhow, I can add this as an enhancement ticket. Gutenprint currently doesnāt support the specific Canon LBP models that use the CAPT driverā¦
Haiku Enhancement ref: CAPT Printer Driver & Utilities for Haiku Ā· Issue #8469 Ā· haikuports/haikuports (github.com)
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There is already an update to Gutenprint somewhere in the pipeline and no need to open a ticket for it if itās just that. But there is no LBP-3000 printer listed on Gutenprint homepage: Gutenprint Supported Printers so I doubt it.
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i canāt keep up with everything, Iāll take you at your word, i was just suggesting a ticket
I am of the same opinion. The Canon LBP 3000 uses a CAPT driver, and most likely it is only suitable for the LBP 3000 printer (on the Canon website there are no other printer models in the list of compatible equipment, but only the LBP 3000 and this is very remarkable). Hypothetically, it can be compatible with the LBP2900 and others that are close to 3000). I think gutenprint is something else. By the way, I tried to use gutenprint in Ubuntu and didnāt get any result. If you download the Linux driver for the Canon LBP 3000 from the manufacturerās website, then we will not see āgutenprintā, but we will see the āCAPT driverā.
And of course, it would be nice if the haiku developers added āCAPTā to the list of printer types with support for a wide variety of printers (similar to how they did it with āgutenprintā). The printer is the most important peripheral equipment for a computer. The more printer models supported, the more popular the OS will be.
guetenprint supports a massive swath of printers, see if you can petition cannon tool contribute support to guetemprint
I have already issued a ticket and sent
I know this is 2 years old, but Iād like to second it.
Iām new to Haiku. My use case for Haiku is to get some life out of old hardware. The relatively low hardware requirements are great, so Iām looking to repurpose an old machine for writing. As such, it is connected to an old (dot mtrix) printer, KX-P1150-compatible, connected via parallel-to-USB adapter. None of the Gutenprint drivers work for me. If I pick an arbitrary driver just for testing, the connection to the printer is made, but rubbish prints, as expected. Gutenprint website shows that their drivers are for inkjects and laserjets.
A simple generic text printer would let me print out stuff.
I recognise that support for printers from literally decades ago is not a sensible priority for the Haiku project, but any suggestions as to a workaround?
Is there an equivalent to directing text to the printer device?
On DOS you could copy stuff to lpt1 or to prn, on Linux you can
echo A small test >> /dev/lp0
Using listusb, I can see that the equivalent here would be:
echo a small test > /dev/bus/usb/0/0/2
But nothing happens, regardless of permissions etc on the device.
Any suggestions welcome. I know I could plug in a different printer, but I want to explore this first. Thanks!
Wow, can you even still get tapes for that?
āPrintā to PDF, then move that PDF to another computer with another OS for printing. Or, if the originating program was ported (e.g. LibreOffice), copy the file to another computer that has the same or compatible program on it (NextCloud is good for this). Jut make sure you have the same fonts available on both.
I know, thatās incredibly clumsy. But these days I rarely print stuff, so this works for me. Scanner support is actually more important to me. As long as Haiku is in Beta and nobody is expected to have a Haiku box as their only computer ā¦
If you know what protocol lp0 here implements we could probably add that too.
Have you tried the existing generic print drivers included with Gutenprint? It also looks like it supports LPR.
Come 14 October 2025, when Win19 support ends, I and no doubt many others will be hoping to use Haiku as the only computer.
There is no protocol. You just send text to the device file.
As a result, there isnāt really a need for a driver either. You need a driver for the USB to parallel port adapter, that will make a device appear somewhere in /dev (. Since you have already managed to have the printer print something, I guess you already have that? Iām not sure, because I canāt see a driver for that in Haiku sourcecode.
Anyway, once the adapter is set up and the device identified, you can send text files to it.
Not really, that will send things directly at the USB level, and the adapter (and the USB stack, probably) will not know what to do with it. You need a driver that will expose this as a parallel port (I guess it should show up in /dev/ports then). The driver will then encapsulate the text into proper USB commands for the adapter.
Please, can you not put plainly wrong information about topics you donāt understand? This is an old dot matrix printer. That means it is for text mode only. It does not support IPP, which appeared 10 or 20 years later.
These comments are unhelpful and will jsut waste everyoneās time.
Gutenprint is meant for printing images only. It is a project derived from GIMP, and the goal was to do high quality bitmap image printing, with proper color profiles and the like. It is obviously not whatās needed here.
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Thanks for these comments. AFAIK there are no drivers in Gutenprint for this. Itās like in DOS days when you could just go:
copy file.txt lpt1:
and it would come out the printer. No rasteriser involved. The printer supplied the font, you just asked for a letter āaā, say, (by sending an ASCII code to the printer). Maybe if I put Haiku on a box that has a native parallel port, or a PCI card with such a port, I could just send text to the appropriate entry in /dev? This machine lacks a parallel port, but I could try another box.
When I āinstallā the printer, I can use the printer dialog, choose USB and choose an (arbitrary) Gutenprint driver. Haiku finds the usb-to-parallel cable and I can then ask for a test page, and Haiku sends a string of bits to the device, which interprets them and prints garbage, including random line returns and overprinting. So it seemed to me that a correct ādriverā would be possible. I know once upon a time there was talk of CUPS on Haiku, and that suite includes old drivers for these printers. But I think that is seen as not worth the effort. Thereās a limit to how far back one should expect compatibility!
I appreciate the consideration the idea has been given. Many thanks. Iāll continue to tinker and if I achieve anything, Iāll post about it.
Quite sensible advice, thanks! Part of hobbyist computing is trying to do the unlikelyā¦