I’ve been exploring Haiku over the past few days with a view to replacing my existing ArcaOS system - ArcaoS is the current,much updated, variation of IBM OS/2, see https://www.arcanoae.com/
Haiku certainly has most of what I need for my basic computing needs: a fairly current browser, office suite, email client. However, on attempting to install a printer I found the “gotcha” - hplip is not installed and, judging by what I read in these forums, will not exist on Haiku.
After installing sane and Sanity I also discover there is no scanner support.
Yes, my HP ENVY Photo 6234 mfc needs hplip/hpaio in order to work with *nix and OS/2 systems, older printer drivers and scanner backends do not work.
The plus side to porting hplip would be support for “3466 HP printer,scanner and fax devices” - see HP Linux Imaging and Printing | hp's Developer Portal - most of which have either very limited support from elderly printer drivers or no support at all.
While I have enjoyed learning a little about Haiku I certainly cannot consider Haiku as a replacement system due to lack of printer/scanner support. May keep it installed on this Dell E5500 laptop for a little while yet though
Unfortunately, hpaio (proprietary hp usb protocol) is necessary to discover devices trough usb so it won’t be easy to make the scanner work. But, you should be able to print using IP defining the protocol as HP JetDirect and the printer as PCLx compatible.
This is constructive and useful feedback, and will hopefully be taken on board by the development team. I haven’t needed to print or scan on Haiku yet, and wasn’t aware of these problems (though no doubt many people are).
Notice that while it should works via HP JetDirect “transport”, it won’t auto discover your printer, nor its IP address, you will have to find by yourself. You can use your router / ISP box web interface or app to see the list of local devices it has detected, and which IP address is currently assigned to the printer.
Hopefully this IP address will always be the same, if not, again check the router/ISP box how to setup a static IP address for your printer.
The port is usually 9100, the default port.
For the printer driver, do you tried to see if this model is supported by our PCL5 or PCL6 print drivers?
For scanning, I’m not sure the SANE driver support scanning over network, or if Haiku port of SANE currently support direct access over network. Over USB it should works, though.
If its works over USB, please open a ticket on HaikuPorts project (GitHub - haikuports/haikuports: Software ports for the Haiku operating system. · GitHub) about libsane, asking for networked scanners support to be added.
Maybe it’s already there, but you have to manually edit some config file in order to let the SANE driver know what is the scanner IP address, as auto-discovery is not supported most probably.
Check with SANE project about any configuration needed.
“This reads a bit like the “Linux sucks because a is broken” messages to get support.”
No, it doesn’t. He never said anything derogatory about Haiku. He merely stated that he can’t use it as a replacement for his present system because two vital facilities don’t work. And that’s fair enough.
It’s good that there are, or may be, work-arounds, but clearly Haiku needs improvements in these areas if non-technical people are going to be able to use it as a Windows replacement - which is what I hope it will become.
I wrote “a bit”, and I can hold that interpretation, the topic isn’t titled “my printer doesn’t work”. anyway, I don’t see why you feel the need to argue with other peoples subjective interpretations…
I argued because an objective interpretation of the post in question reveals no negativity.
We are trying to welcome potential users of Haiku, and your post wasn’t particularly welcoming.
But we all have off-days, and whilst I may argue with you from time to time, I do acknowledge that you are an important contributor to Haiku development.
I mean, Haiku needs users, like any software, but at this stage, it’s for those users who are going to use it whether it’s ready or not. If you need to make reasonable use of a printer, for example, you will have to find another way. If you didn’t know that, OK to check here, discuss the issues around it, fine - that’s why we’re here. If it’s a deal breaker for you, join 8.3 billion other people who are not using Haiku.
Note that recent HP multifonctions printers have a web interface that you can call from iceweasel and will allow you to scan. I tried Web+ but since there’s a problem with the certificate (self certified) it doesn’t work. With Otter, you pass the certificate problem but fails to scan. That’s not as handy as with sane, you have to crop the pic after if your doc has not a predefined format.
Yes, this method works with certain HP OfficeJet PRO printers and specific Haiku apps (i.e. print aware/enabled). Most USB scanners will work using Sanity - but some Canon scanners currently require modern IPP methods.
I have very limited knowledge of hplip and hpaio but my experience with the OS/2 ports of these, and cups, is that hpaio is needed to get my wireless connected scanner to work - not needed for cups/hplip at all.
Setting the printer to use HP JetDirect and PCL5 results in a test page printed in mono - possibly because printer specs state that it uses PCL3+…
“Haiku doesn’t support my hardware” is absolutely a valid criticism. I will say that printer and scanner support are one of our (as well as Linux’s) weakest points.
IPP / IPPS were suppose to unify the industry, but most printers have their own custom document formats which are generally closed or proprietary.
It supports jpeg images, image/urf (some Apple raster format), image/pwg-raster (no idea), and “application/octet-stream”
Notice the following isn’t listed: plain-text, pdf, postscript, etc? If I want to print any of these kinds of documents, the printer expects “application/octet-stream”
What is “application/octet-stream”? It’s whatever cnijfilter2 spits out.
What is cnijfilter2?
One of these 7 applications to translate documents into that custom application/octet-stream:
Keep in mind, this is all to support one printer model. Some other Canon printers will use this format, some others will use other tools.
To be fair, most printers now support URF / PWG Raster format (practically the same) over IPP Everywhere transport.
Alas, Haiku doesn’t. Yet.
It depends on ZeroConf / bonjour / mDNS feature for printers auto discovery, and IPP Everywhere is a bit more capabilities introspection based than what current haiku IPP transport knows and does.
That’d be the Printer Working Group raster format, from the same IPP people. It seems that IPP Everywhere printers MUST support that type and only SHOULD support pdf.
pwg-raster and cups-raster (on which it is based) specs. I guess we could support that.
