[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#391241: CUPS does not provide an "Out of black ink" error message when printers such as mine are out of ink

[Jason Spiro]

Package: cupsys
Version: 1.2.1-3
Severity: normal

CUPS does an excellent job of printing to an amazing variety of
printers. But, it  does not provide useful error messages when
printers such as my Epson Stylus 740 are out of ink. (I suspect,
though, that my printer model is not the only problematic printer.)

When my 740 (an inkjet a few years old) is out of ink, CUPS reports in
its error.log:

[04/Oct/2006:21:09:42 -0400] [Job 15] LPGETSTATUS returned a port
status of 10...

and lpstat -p tells me, IIRC, "Printer failure!".

This is a problem because I should not be expected to search on Google
to find out what is wrong. CUPS should tell users a more useful
message such as "Out of black ink. Color ink low. Please change black
cartridge." in the printer status area.

Cheers,
Jason Spiro

P.S. I am using etch, last dist-upgraded about 4 months ago. My
printer is an EPSON Stylus Color Series CUPS v1.2 on
usb://EPSON/Stylus COLOR 740. If I recall correctly I use Gutenprint.

P.P.S. If you are a CUPS Debian Developer interested in SSH'ing in to
my PC to work on this bug, please contact me by email, Jabber
(jasonspiro at gmail.com) or Skype (jasonspiro).

-- 
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