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As detailed in these instructions, I am using cups-pdf to print from PDF-XChange, which I have installed under Wine 1.6.2 on Ubuntu 14.04. It works great for printing monochrome pages, but I am unable to change the settings to color mode. Using native Linux applications (such as evince or chrome) I am able to print in color, so I believe cups for some reason cannot access the color setting on my printer (I only have one color printer to test with at the moment).
Below is the output of lpoptions -l.
PageSize/Page Size: Custom.WIDTHxHEIGHT Letter *A4 11x17 A3 A5 B5 Env10 EnvC5 EnvDL EnvISOB5 EnvMonarch Executive Legal
Duplex/Double-Sided Printing: DuplexNoTumble DuplexTumble *None
Resolution/Resolution: 150x150dpi 300x300dpi *600x600dpi 1200x1200dpi
There is no color option to changed so I am not sure where to go from here.
The reason I want to print from PDFX-Change is that it has more advanced optiones for printing large images/posters on multiple sheets than for example evince. My current workaround is to print to pdf in PDF-XChange and then print that PDF with evince, but if possible I would like to enable color printing directly from PDF-XChange.
Clarification of workflow
After installing PDFX-Change via wine I discovered I cold not print pages from my Xerox-Phaser-7500DN printer. I then installed cups-pdf as mentioned in the link above and printing is now working. However, all the printed pages are in black and white and I wish to print in color. All the native Ubuntu programs successfully prints in both color and black and white, the problem is only with PDFX-Change (and presumably any other wine application, which I have not tested).
joelostblom
Posted 2015-02-04T17:57:57.853
Reputation: 1 833
Please list your printer in your question (or am I misunderstanding your question and the printer isn't relevant to the issue?). When you use CUPS-PDF, you're outputting a PDF file and then printing it as a second step? The resulting PDF is monochrome; the issue isn't that you get a color PDF but it prints in monochrome? Your workflow is a little ambiguous. Can you make the procedures a little more explicit? – fixer1234 – 2015-02-04T19:22:31.987
Thanks for commenting. I added a clarification of the workflow to the question – joelostblom – 2015-02-04T23:48:13.657
I'm still not following exactly. I'm not familiar with PDFX-Change, but it looks like it's a PDF reader with some capabilities, and then there is a PDF printer driver of the same name. You describe creating the PDF from the source document using either CUPS-PDF or PDFX-Change, viewing/manipulating the result in PDFX-Change, printing it from PDFX-Change back through CUPS-PDF to create a new PDF, somehow it gets to the printer, and somewhere between the original MS Office document and the paper coming out of the printer, it goes from color to monochrome. – fixer1234 – 2015-02-05T01:07:08.360
I have an existing pdf that I open in PDFX-Change, which is a pdf-reader as you say. I open an existing pdf (I don't create one myself) in PDFX-Change and click print and choose to print from Xerox-Phaser_7500DN. The pdf will then be printed from the printer, but color will not be preserved, everything is black and white.The mention of cups-pdf is just because I had to install it to get printing to work at all from PDFX-Change, the procedure of printing does not involve me actively doing anything with cups-pdf. – joelostblom – 2015-02-05T14:30:03.397
CUPS is a system of printer drivers that allow software to interact with your printer. Any printing you do in Linux probably uses it. Since Evince and Chrome work, CUPS isn't the problem. CUPS-PDF is a "freebie" that gets installed with CUPS. It converts output to a PDF rather than printer instructions. The only relationship it might have to your situation would be creating the PDFs you view in PDF-XChange, which apparently also has its own PDF print driver for that purpose. It sounds like PDF-XChange is sending only monochrome to the printer. – fixer1234 – 2015-02-05T20:24:09.183
PDF-XChange has a free and a paid "Pro" version, as well as various PDF tool packages at various prices. Like many products available in free and paid versions, they may limit some features in the free version to encourage people to buy the paid one. They have a version comparison here: http://www.tracker-software.com/pdf-xchange-products-comparison-chart, but it focuses on the PDF tools and doesn't appear to mention printing. Color printing may be a feature reserved for a paid version.
– fixer1234 – 2015-02-05T20:39:20.217It's not a limitation in the PDF software. I have been printing with the free version on windows, so it is related running it under wine or printing from wine. I could print from all my native linux application from the get go, but wine printing did not work until I installed
cups-pdf. So that package enable printing via wine, but not color printing via wine. – joelostblom – 2015-02-05T21:26:23.197Wine does have a lot of limitations, especially when Windows programs need to interface with the hardware. It's nowhere close to perfect. The fact that you got PDF-XChange to work for most of its features is great; many programs won't work at all under Wine. Each successive version of Wine gets more robust and there are some Wine add-ons that help with specific shortcomings. The simplest and least expensive temporary solution will be to use a work-around. Check out Wine support (https://www.winehq.org/help/) to see if someone has figured out how to solve the problem.
– fixer1234 – 2015-02-05T21:40:39.453