BJC Driver for GhostScript

The driver differs from the bjc600/bjc800 driver (first, it is not part of colour deskjets 'gdevcdj.c' ). It has extra capabilities, for example:

Output gamma correction (Grey or RGB)
Colour correction based on paper colour (RGB)
Colour inks can be used separately for monochrom or greyscale printing (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Cyan+Magenta= Blue, Cyan+Yellow=Green or Magenta+Yellow=Red)
Inverse printing
Setable Media type
Setable printing quality
...

The description is divided into four parts. The first is a Howto (I.) , the second is a guide to Installation of the patch (II.) , the third is a long description of the Source code (III.) , the fourth part is a TODO (IV.) , the fifth is about the cartridge refilling (IV.) .

Before anything, the latest files (v0.75):

I. How to Use the driver

1. The driver includes four devices:

bjcmono driver for monochrom printing (black, or simple colours), GhostScript default dithering, NO gamma correction, NO paper colour correction,
bjcgray driver for grayscale printing (black, or simple colours), Floyd-Steinberg dithering, gamma correction, paper 'colour' correction
bjccmyk driver for colour printing, GhostScript default dithering, NO gamma correction, NO paper colour correction,
bjccolor driver for colour printing, Floyd-Steinberg dithering, gamma correction (grey or RGB), paper colour correction
I want to make a fifth device ('bjcphoto' ), but it is a bit difficult (for me) to understand the photo cartridge (BC-06) 'programming' from some printing from Windows driver to file. If you have some good ideas, please write it to me ( Gergely Szász ).

2. The command line arguments:

' PrinterType' you can set the type of the printer from the above list:

' BJC-250' or ' 250' default. (Yes I have an original BJC-250 printer)
' BJC-250ex' or ' 250ex'
' BJC-1000' or ' 1000 '

At the moment this setting has NO effect!

' Feeder' you can set the paper feeder:

' Auto' or 'a ' default
' Manual' or 'm '

so on my BJC-250, I can't see any difference from Manual or Auto (and the Windows driver makes the same (boring effect!); if I load a paper to the printer from the back (maybe this is the manual sheet feeder) and start a print job, the first thing my BJC-250 does is to spit off the loaded paper.

' Media' the printing media:

' PlainPaper' or ' Plain' or 'p ' default
' CoatedPaper' or ' Coated'
' TransparencyFilm' or ' Trans'
' BackprintFilm' or ' Back'
' PaperWithLead' or ' Lead'
' Textile' or ' Fabric' or 'Text '
' GlossyPaper' or ' Gpaper' or 'g '
' HighGlossyFilm' or ' Gfilm'
' Envelope' or ' Env' or 'e '
' Card' or ' plain' or 'p '
' HighResolutionPaper' or ' HiPap' or ' h'
' HighResPaper' or ' HiRes'
' FullBleed' or ' Bleed'
' Banner'
' Other'

so this is the list. Yes, there are two 'hires' paper (why? see the 'gdevbjcl.h '). The CoatedPaper comes from the 'gdevbjcl.h ', because the Windows driver doesn't use it, but it uses the ' CoatedPaper' code for the ' Other' !?

' Quality' of the printing:

' Normal' or 'n ' default
' High' or 'h '
' Draft' or 'd '
and ' NonBleed' or ' b '

so the NonBleed option is probably for the photo ink??

' InkColor' for monochrom or grayscale printing. If you use a colour cartridge (BC-05) you can set a colour for printing:

' Black' or 'K ' default
' Cyan' or 'C '
' Magenta' or 'M '
' Yellow' or 'Y '
' Red' or 'R '
' Green' or 'G '
' Blue' or 'B '
' CK' cyan and black
' MK' magenta and black
' YK' yellow and black
' RK' red and black
' GK' green and black
' BK' blue and black
' CMY' cyan magenta and yellow
' CMYK' all component

if you use a black cartridge (BC-02) this setting has no effect and the printing goes on with black (what a pitty..)

' InkColor' for cmyk or colour printing, causes printing of selected components only:

' Black' or 'K '
' Cyan' or 'C '
' Magenta' or 'M '
' Yellow' or 'Y '
' Red' or 'R '
' Green' or 'G '
' Blue' or 'B '
' CK' cyan and black
' MK' magenta and black
' YK' yellow and black
' RK' red and black
' GK' green and black
' BK' blue and black
' CMY' cyan magenta and yellow
' CMYK' all component, default

it may be used for nothing (I used it only for diagnostic).

These parameters are all string parameters, so you can define them with the '-sPPPPPPP=xxxxxx' form, for example:

gs -sDEVICE=bjcmono -sInkColor=Yellow ...

'Inverse ' could be 'true ' or 'false', and cause inverse printing. Default is false :-)
'Smooth ' could be 'true ' or 'false', and cause smoothed printing with the BC-02 cartridge. Default is false.
'Compress ' could be 'true ' or 'false', and it controlls the compression of the raster lines. The compression has NO EFFECT on the image!!! It only shortens (or not) the length of the data sended to the printer. I have an AMD-K2/450 and ~192M RAM and I experienced about 30% avarage CPU usage difference between using compression or not with the 'bjcmono ' device (~30% CPU usage for compress and ~60% CPU usage for non-compress) for the 'escher.ps ' example printing at 360dpi and about 10% avarage CPU usage difference between using compression or not with the 'bjccolor ' device (~60% CPU usage for compress and ~70% CPU usage for non-compress) for the same file. This dramatic difference between the ' bjcmono' and the ' bjccolor' device is because the colour image can't be compressed as well as the black one and so the difference between the length of the printed lines reduces in case of the colour image. I used it for diagnose. Default is true.
' ComposeK' could be ' true' or 'false ', and cause creating 'K' component. The three colour /C, M, Y/ together make black so, if we have black ink next to colour inks, we can print it with black ink instead of expensive colour inks /this is the K component/. With the BJC-250 or 1000 it has no practical effect, because we cannot print black and colour together. The dafult is false.
'LimitCheck ' could be 'true ' or 'false', and causes limiting the error coming from paper colour correction. It may make some garbage printing clearer. The default is false.

So, these five options are bool. You could define them as follows:

gs -sDEVICE=bjccmyk -dInverse -dCoompress=false ...

You know, the -dPPPPPPP is equal with -dPPPPPPP=true!!

'PaperRed ', 'PaperGreen ' and 'PaperBlue ' determine the colour of the paper (the default is white / 255, 255, 255/), and the range of the colour component intensity is from '0 ' to 255'. The 0,0,0 is a black paper (quite a good choice for printing), and the 255,255,255 is a white sheet of paper.
'Gamma ', 'RedGamma', 'GreenGamma ', and 'BlueGamma ' represent a floating point value between ' 0.0 ' and '10.0 '. ' Gamma' for the grey gamma correction ( bjcgray or bjccolor ) and 'XxxGamma ' for the colour gamma corrections (bjccolor ). If 'Gamma' is set other than '1.0 ' (1.0 means no correction) the ' XxxGamma' has NO effect, and ' Gamma' defines the correction. The 'XxxGamma' has NO effect on 'bjcgray ' device. The default is 1.0 (:-).
'Random ' determines the randomization in % for Floyd-Steinberg dithering. So it has effect only on bjcgray and bjccolor devices. The range is 0 to 100 (%), '0' means no randomization of dithering and 100 means full randomization. If we print pictures with big areas in same colour (e.g. the gray background on tiger.ps), the original Floyd-Steinberg dithering can make a pattern like area, which seems to be quite a bad thing.

Original image Dithered image Pattern like area

The second figure in Netscape 4.47 is badly formed (try this jpeg image ), but in Opera is perfect!! (decoding of png images is not perfect in Netscape!?)

So, with randomization (we determine the cutting treshold around the original value randomly in a settable range) we could avoid this ugly effect. Default range is 15%. (Compare printed images with -dRandom=0 -r90 tiger.ps, and with -r90 tiger.ps)

3. Some examples:

gs -sDEVICE=bjcgray -dPaperRed=200 -dGamma=1.4 ... it means the following: we use a bright cyan paper (RGB: 200,255,255), and we want to print a bit 'lighter' than the original image
gs -sDEVICE=bjccolor -dGamma=0.7 ... is the same as
gs -sDEVICE=bjccolor -dRedGamma=0.7-dGreenGamma=0.7 -dBlueGamma=0.7 ... and the same as
gs -sDEVICE=bjccolor -dGamma=0.7-dRedGamma=0.1-dGreenGamma=1.7 -dBlueGamma=9.7 ... because the -dGamma is set
so these three examples mean the following: we want to print a bit darker than the original image

gs -sDEVICE=bjccolor -dRedGamma=0.7 ... , we want to weaken the red component of the image

gs -sDEVICE=bjcgray -sInkColor=M -dCompress=false ... , we print the image in Magenta without the raster line compression

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II. Installing the patch

1. Download the patch (and the ghostscript source code )
(2. Uncompress the ghostscript source in e.g /usr/src/)
3. Uncompress the patch in the same directory e.g. /usr/src/ :

gzip -d gs6.50-bjc250-v0.75.patch.gz

3. Patch the patch:

patch -p0 <gs6.50-bjc250-v0.75.patch

4. Compile and install ghostscript

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III. About the source code

Go Up

IV. TODO

A 'photo' device which is able to print with BC-06 photo cartridge.

V. The refilling of the Canon ink cartridges

At first, I would like to mention that it will only be abaut the BC-02, BC-05 and BC-06 type of Canon ink cartridges, but perhaps it can be applied for the other types (BC-20 ...). Why not?? :-)

The first step is to pick out of the tiny plug(s). I usually do it with a needle. Stick the needle into the hole of the plug, and put it out while twisting it around. When you try it first it will probably seem quite difficulte, but you can get the head of it! :^|
Next you will need a hypodermic syringe. The black cartridge is cca. 20ml, and one tank of the color cartidge is one-third of it, so a 5-10ml hypodermic is seem to be good choice.
You will need some ink too. [ :-) ] I tried a number of types such as:

Parker Quink - black and turquise
M&M Ink turquise
KOH-I-NOOR Inkoust blue and black
Kores stamp pad ink green and red

Perhaps the only important criteria is that it has to be water based.

You will need some alcoholic (not exactly for you, but for ink :-), may the i-propyl alcohol no better than ethanol, but cheaper. (I use ethanol :-).
Next fill the cartridge whit a mixture of alcohol and ink (I use about 1/4 - 3/4 alcohol - ink mixture).
Insert the cartridge, and do some 'Head Cleaning'. The bjc-setup utility may help.
Try it...

If you have any ideas, suggestions, or problems please write them to me .

.PS images 'made' by GIMP-1.2.1
.PS sorry for my english