test print uses far too much ink

Yes; the printer test page in Ubuntu waste far too much ink. This is a big problem that needs to be addressed NOW.

After two or three test pages my printers are running low on ink. Ubuntu's printer test pages simply suck all the ink out of the printer.

Not very beneficial to end users.

Please address and correct this monstrosity.

Not sure if this qualifies as a bug, but I agree 100%

Here are the culprits.

/usr/share/system-config-printer/testpage-a4.ps
/usr/share/system-config-printer/testpage-letter.ps

Surely something can be done with this. It wastes a shed load of ink.

Printing a self test page does not work with my Epson R200

mtink uses much less ink with a nozzle check but newbies might not be aware of mtink and it needs to be added to the menu's manually.

This test page needs to be scaled down. I can't print a test page any other way as other apps don't support bluetooth printers.

Well I'm not sure if this is really a bug... Of course it uses some more ink than just a simple "your printer works"-page. But on the other hand you can see everything relevant: How big the crop at the edges is and if colors are printed correctly (no tint).

Maybe an alternative test page could be a solution but I guess you can achive that yourself by opening OOo, typing a few words and trying to print.

I'm working on it. Should it be simply a thinned-down version of the original test page, without the Ubuntu logo?

Here's a preliminary version of the test page. I believe it will save us some ink, but still fill in enough color for solidity verification. Color cartridge alignment can also be checked with it.

I think it's missing an Ubuntu logo. It's not an essential thing, but would look more professional. I'm open to suggestions on where to add it, what's the best size, etc.

Thank you very much for redesigning the test page.

Please re-add the borders to test the unprintable margins.

For Ubuntu, the Ubuntu logo should be included, but it can be smaller than on the original test page.

@Till Kamppeter
Thanks for your quick response. Would you know where I can find a vector version of the new Ubuntu logo? All I can find is the old one.
After adding the logo and the borders, I'll make a letter-sized version too.

Rip it out of the current version of the test page (Maverick), It is an embedded EPS.

I'm sorry for taking so long to come back. Inkscape somehow couldn't export the files to pdf. This was solved by converting everything to plain svg paths. Anyway...

This version brings back the Ubuntu logo and the page borders (for printable area testing). Please give me some feedback.

Thanks for the new test page design, it looks really great.

Only point to improve are the borders. What distance did you choose?

I suggest to put the borders exactly as in the old test page:

8 lines, 1/16 of an inch apart, so the innermost being 1/2 of an inch away from the border. Line styles as in the old page, too. This makes it much easier to see how big the unprintable borders are and which value in PostScript points (1/72 inch) has to be used in the PPD file.

Any updates on this?

fix commited. should be in 12.04 :-) thanks canonical ^^

The old test pages are removed from system-config-printer and the newly designed test page ships as part of the cups-filters package.

cups-filters (1.0.3-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
     - cups-filters 1.0.3 release
     - bannertopdf fixes: Scale test page template to fit the job's page size,
       get and display full page geometry information, draw the frame which
       marks the printable area 1pt smaller, to assure that it gets completely
       visible (LP: #921073).
  * debian/control: Added explicit build dependency on libfontconfig1-dev.

 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Thu, 1 Mar 2012 18:35:51 +0100

cups-filters (1.0.2-1) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Till Kamppeter ]
  * New upstream release
     - cups-filters 1.0.2 release
     - bannertopdf fixes
  * debian/local/default-testpage.pdf, debian/source/include-binaries: Added
    Ubuntu-branded test page template.
  * debian/rules: Replace the upstream test page template by the Ubuntu-branded
    one if the package is built under Ubuntu.

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * debian/control: Build-depend on libpoppler-private-dev for the impending
    poppler 0.18 transition. Thanks Pino Toscano! (Closes: #660989)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:48:00 +0100

See also:

  http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/printer-test-page/