Ambiguous order in print quality

The options settings and their order a determined by the PPD file. which is part of the printer driver, not by the printer setup tools like gnome-cups-manager. Can you tell which driver you are using so that your bug report can get assigned to the correct package?

This is the PPD file:
/usr/share/ppd/openprinting/Brother/BR5250_2_GPL.ppd.gz

This is the package:
openprinting-ppds

Please assign this bug to the correct package.

The problem is not in any of the printer setup tools. The tools handle this PPD correctly. The problem are very confusing names and UI strings for the choices of the "Print Quality" option by Brother. The option entry in the PPD looks like this:

*OpenUI *CAPT/Print Quality:PickOne
*OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *CAPT
*DefaultCAPT: Middle
*CAPT Low/300 dpi: "<</HWResolution [300 300] >> setpagedevice"
*CAPT Middle/600 dpi: "<</HWResolution [600 600] >> setpagedevice"
*CAPT Fine/HQ 1200: "<</HWResolution [1200 1200] >> setpagedevice
statusdict/true1200 known{statusdict begin false true1200 end}if
"
*CAPT SFine/1200 dpi: "<</HWResolution [1200 1200] >> setpagedevice
statusdict/true1200 known{statusdict begin true true1200 end}if
"
*CloseUI: *CAPT

Looking at the machine-readable (command line) names of the choices (names before the slash "/") then one sees that "HQ 1200" (Fine) is a lower print quality than "1200 dpi" (SFine = Super Fine?), which goes fully against what a user woul think when he only sees the UI strings in a menu. Here a user would be much better served when he would see "Low", "Middle", "Fine", and "Super Fine" in the "Print Quality" menu. Or "HQ 1200" should be renamed to "600 dpi enhanced").

HP has similar choices for the print quality. They call the two choices for 1200 dpi "FastRes 1200" and "ProRes 1200" with which a user recognizes much easier which one gives the higher quality.

The bug is in Brother's PPD (and probably also present in Windows if there are no icons or tooltips). Unfortunately, I have no contact to the person who made the PPD. It was posted on OpenPrinting in 2005. I got it by someone from Brother Europe who also has no contact to the people who have made the PPDs.

Considering how long no one from Brother posted new PPDs or updated the existing ones, we can modify the options without problem and will not run in any maintenance problems.

Till, thanks for looking into this matter.

I would like to suggest labels which are maximally explanatory. E.g. for Brother's "Print Quality":
"300 Low"
"600 Middle"
"1200 Fine (High Quality)"
"1200 Super Fine"

E.g. for HP I would suggest:
"1200 Fast Resolution"
"1200 Professional Resolution"

Especially users which are not so well with computers, the English language or either would be helped a lot by improved print quality labels.

For contacting Brother, you can use this form:
https://secure6.brother.co.jp/LinuxContactUs/contact/Linuxform.html
The contact link on the USA pages doesn't work at the moment.

It would be good to get in touch with them regarding these drivers for possible up stream patching for this issue and maybe other already fixed bugs.

Hi all, any update on this print quality issue?

Fixed in foomatic-db upstream.

This bug was fixed in the package foomatic-db - 20090617-0ubuntu1

---------------
foomatic-db (20090617-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - Many new printer models added (Fixes: LP: #10871, LP: #83960,
      LP: #114681, LP: #121060, LP: #258058, LP: #273975, LP: #343444,
      LP: #371737).
    - More user-friendly UI strings for the "Print Quality" option in some
      Brother PPD files (LP: #141487).
    - Replaced broken PPD for the Kyocera FS-9100DN by the one for the
      FS-9120DN (LP: #344691).
    - Added "*cupsFilter:" lines to all PCL-XL PPD files from Ricoh and OEM
      so that they accept PDF as input format. This assures that always the
      most straightforward CUPS filter chain gets used and interferences
      between filters (like LP: #361772) get avoided.
    - Removed "Black and White" Color Mode (1 bit per pixel) from the
      "cdj550" driver. This mode is not supported by the driver (LP: #337133).
    - DesignJet driver assignement fixes, new "cdnj500" driver.
    - Correction of auto-detection strings.
    - Addition of CUPS custom option definitions to the PPDs from Ricoh
      family and OEM.
    - New "pxldpl" driver entry for the Dell 3010cn and Dell DPL printers
      in general.
  * Merge from debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - Driver entries removed for drivers which are not shipped by Ubuntu
    - Fixed manufacturer-supplied PPDs: "*CloseUI <option>" ->
      "*CloseUI: <option>", "*1284DeviceId" -> "*1284DeviceID".
    - openprinting-ppds-extra package with PPDs from Ricoh family and OEM
      and non-English PPDs from Kyocera
    - Linked PPD files with Foomatic database, so that links in the Foomatic
      XML files keep working.
    - Removed link into /usr/share/cups/model, it makes PPDs appearing
      twice.
    - debian/patches/bjc600-bjc800.patch: Removed workaround for Ghostscript
      crashing when feeding bjc600/bjc800 drivers with PDF. The Ghostscript
      shipped by Ubuntu is fixed.
    - foomatic-filters-ppds discontinued upstream, updated debian/control
      appropriately.
    - foomatic-db does not make sense without foomatic-db-engine and
      foomatic-filters, made the Recommends: a Depends:.

 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:34:49 +0200