BEWARE!

This section is of historical interest only.

Recent distributions of Redhat and Debian have the lx5000 driver compiled as part of their Ghostscript distribution. To check for this, use the command:

If the driver is compiled into gs, it will show in the output from this command.

Source only!

Source RPM now available

Note that this is not a binary RPM.  The driver must be complied with the full ghostscript 6.0 source.  To facilitate this, I have written a source RPM.  The source RPM with full instructions on how to use it, Compiling Ghostscript 6.0 with Lexmark 5xxx & 7xxx drivers, is available here.

Current version

Id: gdevlx50.c,v 1.41 2000-04-18 14:35:41+10 pbw Exp pbw

• 1.41   Fixed paper movement bug in colour printing that caused the driver to infloop, generating an ever-growing output file, or endlessly sending the same line to the printer.
• 1.39   Removed legacy `near' modifiers in inherited code.  These caused compile failures in GS 6.0.  Now compiles with 6.0.
• 1.37   Fixed dirty buffer bug evident as random black noise on first swipe. or as "dirt" at the end of a swipe.  Restored default headSeparation to 16.  More GS compliance changes.
• 1.36   Changes to comply with Ghostscript coding standards, sort of.
• 1.33   300x600 support.
• 1.32   DryingTime parameter added.
• 1.30   -dCMYK runtime switch for colour/black.

BEWARE!

This section is of historical interest only.

Recent distributions of Redhat and Debian have the lx5000 driver compiled as part of their Ghostscript distribution. To check for this, use the command:

If the driver is compiled into gs, it will show in the output from this command.

Download

Source is now (as of 12th March 2000) distributed as part of a source RPM.  Full instructions on using this source RPM to compile and install Ghostscript with a Lexmark 5000 driver are available in Compiling Ghostscript 6.0 with Lexmark 5xxx & 7xxx drivers.

If you are happy to compile Ghostscript by yourself, here is the driver source: gdevlx50.c.  Note that applying the gs6.0.lexmark5000.patch from the patch list, below, will have the effect of placing gdevlx50.c in your source directory.  (To save links as files: In Netscape, use Shift+LeftButton; in IE use RightButton->Save Target As...)

The following patch files may be applied in order to the source tree.

gs6.0.initial.patch

Sets prefix, compiler flags, libraries, etc.

gs6.0.A4.patch

Optional.  Use this if you want gs to default to A4.

gs6.0.lexmark5000.patch

This places gdevlx50.c in your source directory, and patches the makefiles.

gs6.0.lexmark5700.patch

Optional.  Apply this patch if you want to include Stephen Taylor's 5700 driver in the gs binary.

gs6.0.lexmark7000.patch

Optional.  Apply this patch if you want to include Henryk Paluch's 7000 driver in the gs binary.

To apply these patches after downloading the gs6.0 source tree, cd to the top level directory of the tree, and apply the patches in order with
patch -p1 <name-of-the-patch-file

Files for printer administration.  The four available printer administration functions are:

Head alignment

Print out a pattern which shows the relative alignment of the black and colour cartridges.  The data file is blckalgn.out.

Head cleaning

Print out solid blocks from all of the print heads.  blckhcln.out

N.B. The above functions are not yet available for the photo cartridge.

Expose the print cartridges

Allow the cartridges to be changed.  showcart.out

Hide the print cartridges

Park the print cartrideges after changing a cartridge.  hidecart.out

Using the data files.

The most convenient way to use these files is to define a raw queue for the printer, and to print the data files to this queue.  This enables non-root users to perform maintenance on the printer.  This assumes, of course, that such permission is a desirable thing.

For RedHat systems employing the rhs-printfilters system, I use the shell script lx.control, linked to from headalign, headclean, showcartridges and hidecartridges, to effect the printer controls.  The script assumes that the raw queue is lx.control, and that the data files are located in the directory /usr/share/ghostscript/6.0/lib/printers/lexmark, and will have to be modified to taste.

This is a piece of perl code that I used when I was tinkering with the protocol.  I used it to output protocol sequences to stdout.  It was vital to me in decoding one of the 5000's compression methods, and would be easy to modify for other Lexmark models.

!