CUPS/Samsung ML-1410

I happened to come accross the Samsung ML-1410 printer and while CUPS is happily finding the printer and installing the driver without much ado the printouts are not passing the test. At least for the A4 format the printable area is shifted up and the upper part of the page is not being printed.

The problem is that the printer is announcing itself as ML-1510_700 although the label on the printer is ML-1410. I found some tips on the web to edit the PPD file itself substituting all the Default values set to Letter to A4.

Prior to the change the PPD file looked like this:

egrep '^\*Default.*Letter' /etc/cups/ppd/ML-1510_700.ppd 
*DefaultPageSize: Letter
*DefaultPageRegion: Letter
*DefaultImageableArea: Letter
*DefaultPaperDimension: Letter

Post change:

egrep '^\*Default.*A4' /etc/cups/ppd/ML-1510_700.ppd 
*DefaultPageSize: A4
*DefaultPageRegion: A4
*DefaultImageableArea: A4
*DefaultPaperDimension: A4

This solved the problem on Linux (Ubuntu) but there was still no joy MacOS (10.5.6).

I found a better solution. Replace the whole PPD with the correct one from OpenPrinting site.

References

• PuppyLinux install instructions in German mention to replace the PPD
• Ubuntu forum mentioning the PPD edit
• Samsung ML-1410 page at OpenPrinting