Lack of information

Researching this device is rather annoying. I can't find anything that talks about if the printer supports postscript or PCL anywhere on the Lexmark website.

What do I know about it?

Stuff all, other then it listens on port 9100 like an HP printer. This might be a clue that it uses HP tech under the covers, but its not something that its safe to assume.

Because of this I'm left with questions:

• Do the bundled drivers explain it?
• Do they work well?
• Whats the firmware update do? Make it work as a PCL or postscript printer? That would be nice.

PPD extraction script

Because it wasn't obvious what was needed to print to it (a detail somewhat bizarrely missing from all technical details of the printer) I decided to extract the ppd files for myself and find out what was what. On the off chance it would be useful to someone else, I wrote the script to extract the ppds so whoever else might want to see them can cut out the discovery part of their printer setup. (Its nothing special, its just unwrapping layer upon layer of different archives)

#!/bin/bash
# Extract lexmarks drivers from their deb bundles
# Run it from the dir with the printer deb.sh in it

# Where we will extract
tempdir="/tmp/$$"
# Where our ppds go
output="/tmp/output-ppds.$$"
# amd64 is the other option
ourarch="i386"

mkdir $tempdir

# Extract the self installer manually
./lexmark-inkjet-legacy-1.0-1.$ourarch.deb.sh \
        --noexec --target $tempdir

cd $tempdir

# unpack the archive component
tar --lzma --extract --file instarchive_all

# Extract the deb as a tar
# Use tar to extract only the ppd files from it
dpkg --fsys-tarfile lexmark-inkjet-legacy-1.0-1.$ourarch.deb \
  |tar --wildcards '*.ppd' --extract

mkdir $output
mv usr/local/lexmark/legacy/etc/*ppd $output

echo "Look in $output for the ppds"

rm -r $tempdir

Does it work on generic drivers?

No. Not without lexmarks drivers.

I tried the 'PCL 6/PCL XL Printer' drivers, as well as the 'Postscript Printer' (Generic, foomatic) drivers as shipped in Debian - both failed. Thats a rather disappointing result for something thats ostensibly a network printer.

Installing lexmarks drivers

Basic steps to install the driver:

• run the script ./lexmark-inkjet-legacy-1.0-1.i386.deb.sh (or your arch/package format as required). These seem to have a weird glitch where they won't install properly if you don't have a root password (may be inherited from system-config-printer, where I found something similar). If you hit the glitch, use sudo or gksudo to get root for running it.
• agree to the 'I agree that lexmark can beat me up in a dark ally' licence agreement. It contains choice quotes like these: "I agree that this patented printer is licensed for, and designed to work with only genuine Lexmark ink cartridges for the life of the patented printer. I agree to: (1) use only genuine Lexmark ink cartridges with this printer ..." "I agree that the patented print cartridge(s) shipped with this printing device are sold subject to the following license/agreement: The patented print cartridge(s) contained inside is/are licensed for a single use only and is/are designed to stop working after delivering a fixed amount of ink ..." "12. APPLICABLE LAW. This Software Licensing Agreement is governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, United States of America. No choice of law rules in any jurisdiction shall apply. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods shall not apply."
• Hit next. It goes and installs, doing things like reloading udev rules, adding temp files to /root and installing both bundled .debs - whether you want them or not.
• Wait a moment while it closes the installer and launches a configuration application, then step through to your taste.

If someone knows how to get it working with free/generic ppds let me know, because I'd be happy not to agree to that licence again... (I'm also wondering what happens for people who didn't agree to it but set up the printer, does Lexmark think they have sway over them?)

Extracted PPDs

So, what do they tell us? I'll take a quick peak at lxPro800-Pro900.ppd, since its the one which covers my Lexmark Platinum 905p printer. A quick 'head' of the other files looks quite similar so far.

*% PPD file for Lexmark Pro800-Pro900 Series with CUPS.
*% Created by the CUPS PPD Compiler v1.2.3.
*%
*%  Adobe PostScript(R) Printer Description File
*%
*%  Produced by Lexmark International, Inc

So far so good, at least we know there is a fair chance it'll do postscript. If we're super lucky, we might be able to use Proper postscript, not some wacky Lexmark version of it.

A few lines down we see this

*Path: "/usr/local/lexmark/legacy"
[...]
*cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-raster 0 /usr/local/lexmark/legacy/bin/printfilter"

Seems there is more custom magic in there then I'm willing to toy with, so I don't appear to have been super lucky after all :/

Scoreboard and browser setup

For setup of crg-scoreboard please see its README or its wiki (The wiki has quite a bit of info on it these days, and should be a useful resource), or even its mailing list.

Launch chromium, and move a window onto each screen (Assuming you've already set up dual head displays). Your scoreboard will be on http://localhost:8080/ unless you have any site specific changes. Visit the scoreboards 'Video Feed Overlay Scoreboard' on the external monitors browser (This could be a projector, but I've not tested that yet), and 'Main Operator Control Panel' on the laptops screen (or your second screen, if not working with a laptop). Maximise the browser window showing the scoreboard (usually F11) so xwininfo will do the right thing

Scoreboard capture setup

Now, as long as you are running the scoreboard, you should be running recordmydesktop. For me, the command was

recordmydesktop --no-cursor --quick-subsampling --fps 2 --no-sound \
--on-the-fly-encoding --no-frame -o scoreboard-window-`date \
+%Y%m%dT%H%M`.ogv --windowid $(xwininfo |grep 'Window id' \
|cut -d ' ' -f 4)

In brief, the options do the following: disable the mouse from showing, lower the quality (its a three colour image, and over 90% is black), records two frames per second (The clock ticks every second, and thats the fastest updating thing on the board), disable sound (we produce none), encode on the fly (to minimise post recording waiting), don't display a border, the filename (including date and time to the minute) and the window to record.

The mouse will turn into a cross ('+') which you use to select the window you wish to record - the window containing the scoreboard.

Determine Window ID of your Video overlay scoreboard

xwininfo is a handy little command line utility that is included as part of x11-utils package and will show the window id of any window you select. Selecting the external monitor on my laptop gives 'xwininfo: Window id: 0x3cf5f67 "CRG SB Overlay - Chromium"' Take that value and give it to recordmydesktop.

Backporting Openshot

You need a newer Openshot then that in Debian squeeze (stable at the time of writing), we used 1.4.0 from testing as its new enough to have the features we need, and still install without changes.

wget http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openshot/openshot_1.4.0-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i openshot_1.4.0-1_all.deb

Thats it!

Installing the custom Openshot mask

I've added the mask Monica made to the files section of this site. We may end up submitting it upstream at a later date if we find its particularly useful or interesting to others.

The actual importing is fairly painless. Launch Openshot through the Applications menu or from a shell, then visit File -> Import New Transition. Browse to where you downloaded the file using the 'Select Transition' selection box and close the navigation box with OK once the file is selected. If you selected the correct image, OK in the Import Transitions box to confirm. Openshot will (hopefully) tell you the transition imported correctly and it will appear at the bottom of the Transitions tab in the UI.

Doing the overlay

Import all the clips (one at a time in older versions, multiple selection with 1.4). Add the bout footage to Track 1. Add the timing footage to Track 2. Get the scoreboard transition and drag it between the two tracks Right click the transition and select properties Length needs to be the full bout (Unless you use half time for something else, in which case you might want to do two halves). A full bout will be around 7200 seconds (2 hours). Importantly, change the Type from Transition to Mask. Do not modify Softness or Mask Threshold unless you have reason to. Apply to save the changes, and play your video in the preview window. Do any shuffling to the video that you need, then save your project.

Double check the two streams were synced correctly. If they are, its probably time to make DVDs.