Canon PIXMA MP600 and CD printing

Questions on certain printers and applications
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Latimer
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:50 pm

Canon PIXMA MP600 and CD printing

Post by Latimer »

Hello,
I'm new to this forum and fairly new to Linux, running Debian Wheezy.
I have a Canon PIXMA MP600 all-in-one printer and recently downloaded
the trial version of TP because of the flaky open-source support for this model.

I am very satisfied with the results and have found that I can even print on (printable)
CDs/DVDs using the special tray, but the image is not centred on the disk.
When I set up the image in LibreOffice Draw the image was about 20mm too high
and 20mm too far left. When I used glabels, it was even further out. I shall continue to
experiment but wondered whether, in the meantime, someone here might have got round
this problem and have advice.

Here's hoping!

Regards,
Latimer.
Latimer
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:50 pm

Re: Canon PIXMA MP600 and CD printing [SOLVED]

Post by Latimer »

I'm replying to my own topic here, because having continued to experiment I found a way to print on CD's with correct alignment.
I used the GIMP to create a 120mm square image (i.e. the side is the same length as a CD's diameter. For test purposes the image was just two diagonal lines from corner to corner. like a big X. This must be about the simplest image for a good check on centricity - I'd heard it referred to as crosshairs in ZEDOnet advice elsewhere on the forum.

To print the image, I used the Turboprint plugin which prints images using a variant of Gutenprint, rather than the regular Print function of the GIMP (this may also work - I just didn't try it).
Here is the Monitor Window just after the job finished:

Image

As will be seen the centre part of the the crosshairs and the outer ends have been supressed, somewhere along the line, corresponding to the parts which would fall outside the prinable area of the CD/DVD.

The funny thing is that this printing on a CD/DVD and normal paper printing seem to work perfectly well in spite of the warning next to Printer:
! ERROR - no connection to turboprint daemon

To summarize: There is nothing very clever about this solution. It's just that using the GIMP in the way outlined above I get good results whereas using LIbreOffice Draw or glabels I got off-centre printing. I daresay solutions can be found which work with those last two applications but for the time being I'll stick with the GIMP.
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