ALSA upgrade, scanner, printer tests

Audio
As has been reported, alsa-lib and alsa-util in 4.3beta1 are rather old (v1.0.16). I have upgraded them to v1.0.20, matching the version in the 2.6.30.5 kernel.

Immediately there is a good outcome. One problem has been that, with certain audio hardware anyway, small audio files get truncated. For example, /usr/share/audio/2barks.au and 2barks.wav come out as a single bark. No more, on my laptop at least, I now get two distinct barks.

Scan
Recently when I was driving home from Perth, I stopped at my favourite little opportunity shop -- I have mentioned this place before, picked up a couple of PCs there before. It's in a small country town, run by the local church.

Anyway, they had a USB scanner, Hewlett Packard ScanJet 4200C, for $4. That's a bit of a gap in my test suite, so I bought it.

This evening I am doing some testing of the soon-to-be-released 4.3beta2 and tested this scanner. I ran Xsane, and scanned a page, no problem whatsoever. Very nice.

Print
Have also done a basic sanity test for printing, to my parallel-port Epson Stylus C41SX, that was also acquired from the opportunity shop awhile back.

As I recall, there was feedback that printing was not working from certain applications, and over a LAN. I will have to hold-over the latter as I don't have a LAN setup.

First stop, trying ePDFView. There's a demo PDF file at /usr/share/examples/ps-pdf/Acrobat.pdf. Yep, prints.

Now for Abiword. This is version 2.6.3 with 2.6.8 plugins, as discussed in my earlier post. I opened /usr/share/examples/text/testdoc.doc. Success again.

And SeaMonkey. Opening /usr/share/doc/home.htm. That prints also.

After I have released 4.3beta2, would someone like to volunteer to create a hpijs printer package? The reason I ask this is there has been feedback that existing hpijs pet packages do not work in 4.3beta1. Some of you guys who are much more into messing round with printing could do a better job of preparing a hpijs pet package than me.

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Comments

Claws-mail print fails
Username: dogone
Claws-mail 3.5.0 is one app that fails to print via a networked Samsung HL-2070N. Print preview works but the print job fails to reach the CUPS que. CM displays a dialog containing, oddly, "ERROR PRINTING, successful-ok". The HL=2070N works fine otherwise.

It may fix Audacity too?
Username: edoc
"Perhaps the updated Alsa will fix some of the chronic reported problems in Audacity as well. Has anyone tried that? BTW: I have my "play" laptop now so I can break 4.3Beta2 as soon as it is released - without risking a necessary-use laptop.

lan
Username: 01micko
"Hi. I had no problem printing over a wireless network to a windows printer. You can set up puppy as a router very easily with this little program from forum member 'gyro'.http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37520 I use it to connect old boxes without pci or usb to the net through a nic and crossover cable. You can connect it to a switch if you have one and run as many pc's as you have outlets. The program takes care of automatic ip addressing. It's all explained in the post. (No I don't work for gyro!) I just thought this would be an easy way for you (or anyone else) to test printing over a lan.

ShareInternet
Username: BarryK
"01micko, What gyro has created is fascinating! I didn't even know about it, thanks for mentioning it. There's so much going on in the Puppy-world, and I'm always bombarded with information overload, so missed that one somehow, but I've downloaded it and will have a play!

Tags: woof