I've installed a new HP Officejet Pro 8210 printer which I access over the network. Everything appeared to work fine except that when I tried to print anything on A4 sheets the option to select duplex printing was greyed out. The duplex option was available if I selected 'Letter' size.
On examining the PPD file there were 'PageSizeVsDuplex' lines for many page sizes e.g.
but nothing for A4. So I tried adding this line:
With this line added the duplex option was no longer greyed out and I was able to print on both sides of the paper but whenever I attempted to do any duplex printing there was a message saying:
If I replied 'No' fo the message duplex printing worked OK but the messages are irritating.
I was able to print double sided A4 from a Linux PC without any problems. The PPD file on the Linux machine was very similar with only the following differences apart from some translation sections:
I don't know what the significance of the %% characters is but the changes don't look like they'd be relevant to duplex printing but, as an experiment, I replaced the PPD file with the one from Linux and discovered that the duplex option was available despite not having a 'PageSizeVsDuplex' line for A4 and there were no warning messages.
So I can now produce double sided A4 output without any problems but I'm puzzled why the change from "%%" to "" in some apparently unrelated sections had this effect and also wonder if there may be some undesirable consequence which I haven't come across yet.
I've attached the PPD file which I'm now using and was copied from the Linux system
Code:
curlew:/tmp% pkg info -x cups hplip
cups-2.4.2
cups-filters-1.28.15_5
cups-pdf-3.0.1_2
hplip-3.22.4
Code:
*cupsUIConstraints PageSizeVsDuplex: " *Duplex *PageSize A5
Code:
*cupsUIConstraints PageSizeVsDuplex: " *Duplex *PageSize A4
Code:
There are conflicts in duplex settings. Do you want to fix them?
I was able to print double sided A4 from a Linux PC without any problems. The PPD file on the Linux machine was very similar with only the following differences apart from some translation sections:
Code:
--- HP_OfficeJet_Pro_8210-freebsd.ppd 2022-11-13 16:29:12.445109000 +0000
+++ HP_OfficeJet_Pro_8210-linux.ppd 2022-11-13 16:31:16.215864000 +0000
@@ -382,4 +382,4 @@
-*HPPJLOutputMode GeneralOffice/General Office: "%%"
-*HPPJLOutputMode Professional/Professional: "%%"
-*HPPJLOutputMode Presentation/Presentation: "%%"
-*HPPJLOutputMode MaximumDPI/Maximum dpi: "%%"
+*HPPJLOutputMode GeneralOffice/General Office: ""
+*HPPJLOutputMode Professional/Professional: ""
+*HPPJLOutputMode Presentation/Presentation: ""
+*HPPJLOutputMode MaximumDPI/Maximum dpi: ""
@@ -419,3 +419,3 @@
-*HPPJLColorAsGray Off/Off: "%%"
-*HPPJLColorAsGray HighQuality/High Quality: "%%"
-*HPPJLColorAsGray BlackInkOnly/Black Ink Only: "%%"
+*HPPJLColorAsGray Off/Off: ""
+*HPPJLColorAsGray HighQuality/High Quality: ""
+*HPPJLColorAsGray BlackInkOnly/Black Ink Only: ""
So I can now produce double sided A4 output without any problems but I'm puzzled why the change from "%%" to "" in some apparently unrelated sections had this effect and also wonder if there may be some undesirable consequence which I haven't come across yet.
I've attached the PPD file which I'm now using and was copied from the Linux system