Canon BubbleJet driver for BeOS

Version française 

Canon BubbleJet printers aren't supported today under BeOS. Being a BJ-200 owner myself, and after several queries from people in need for a driver, this project see the light.

See the hardware compatibility list to know if your printer is supported... and how to help update it!

If you want to help, please contact me.

What's new?

v0.4 is out!
Totally new multithreaded engine inside, and should (read: experimental) support older BJ models. Still no color support, nor paper format or resolution, so it's only A4, 360 dpi, monochrome printing!

NOTE: I come back from vacation around July 24, so please be patient for feedbacks replies...

Download

Canon BubbleJet v0.4 for BeOS R5 is now available:

Olders versions:

To Do

  • Build a BeOS driver which prints something! (done: v0.1)
  • Print what we want to print! (done: v0.2)
  • Print at usable speed! (done: v0.3)
  • Add an install script (done: v0.4)
  • Multithreaded renderer, to decrease memory usage and increase speed (done: v0.4)
  • Add old BJ-130e like models support (internal class name: bj130e) (experimental: v0.4)
  • Make PageSetup and JobSetup windows less useless! (pending)
  • Documentation (pending)
  • Complete model description files handling (pending)
  • Add paper formats support (todo)
  • Add landscape support (todo)
  • Add color printing support (todo)
  • Add global gamma correction, or by color (todo)
  • Your idea here!

History

  • June 29, 2001:

    v0.4 is out, as a I'm on vacation release!

    • Totally new multithreaded renderer engine: far less memory used, far speeder.
    • Older BJ models experimental support added, but highly untested, as I don't own any of these models.

  • June 13, 2001:

    The new, multi-threaded multi-bands, renderer rewrite is done. :-)

  • May 31, 2001:

    This project is still alive! But the v0.4 is coming slowly because the code must be rewritten to support future features.

  • April 6, 2001:

    v0.3. Still PRE-ALPHA, but now should work at usable speed on (probably) supported models. This version doesn't add any new models support :-( because I must first finish the model description handling system...

  • March 9, 2001:

    Reverse engineering a print capture made from Windows and looking at an alternate Canon driver for GhostScript code sources give life to version v0.2, of this driver, which prints. Finally.
    On my BJ-200 only, probably ;-)
    And very very slowly, yes, but, hey, it's getting better...

  • March 5, 2001:

    B&W dithering code is no more shit, see here the result of Burkes dithering on a page to print (really soon now) in black and white.

    Add english version of this page (sorry for poor english, by the way)...

  • March 2, 2001:

    B&W dithering code is shit (well, read bugged), but anyway his existence still show some progress. Hum, okay, here is the current result screenshoot, just to show that there is something done on code this week...

  • February 16, 2001:

    This page's birth. Please, be tolerant, I'm not a graphic designer nor webmaster! Anyway, feel free to contact me for any suggestion / problem with these pages.

  • February 15, 2001:

    I receive "printer programming" pages from Christophe Fanjaud BJ-10sx manual. These pages quickly highlight the printer commands. Enough at least to understand GhostScript BJ-10e driver (gdevbj10.c) source code.

    v0.1. PRE-ALPHA, that still don't print anything, nothing usefull at least: this version, when in DEBUG mode, display in a window each page bitmap at full resolution (360 dpi, aka 5 times the 72 dpi of screen), like Preview driver include in BeOS.
    In non DEBUG mode, it print on each page a line one inch long at one inch from top and left of page. So daily use is far limited, unless you like waste ink and paper, and that "is no good!" (tm) ;-)

  • February 8, 2001:

    Launch of this project, after several talks at January, 17th 2001' GeekDay and on (french) beos-fr mailing-list.

June 29, 2001