printing on labels with lprint is far slower than with legacy rastertolabel filter from CUPS #161
Description
I am using lprint 1.3.1 on Fedora Rawhide.
I used LibreOffice to create a very small pdf
here.
I also converted it to a png
here
I added my printer via the web ui. I used the usb printer on my laptop and the
I use the following command to print 2 copies with lprint directly: lprint submit -d tester -n 2 print_test.png
There is a huge delay when doing this. The delays I see are roungly 10s before the lprint command returns, then 10s before the first page is printed, then 10s before the second page is printed.
For fun I also setup the printer in CUPS with the Generic IPP Everywhere driver. I then printed with this command: lp -d blah -n 2 print_test.pdf
Same issue as with lprinting the png.
I created the PDF from a LibreOffice doc, so I also tried to just print from LO writer directly. That experienced a similar delay as when trying to lprint the png.
These were all horrifically slow compared to setting up the printer via to older Zebra manufacturer with the Zebra ZPL Label Printer (en) driver which uses the older rastertolabel filter. I say the DPI to 203 and the media size to 4x6. That older driver prints nearly instantaneously when trying to print the pdf or when printing directly from LO. Is there anything that I can do to reduce all the delays I am seeing while using lprint to print to my label printer?
Just so you know, I print hundreds of labels with the older rastertolabel system to use when packaging baked goods for my bakery. I would love to update to lprint, but it's untenable with a 10s wait between each label printing.
As some other tests to rule out my hardware as the problem, I also did the following:
The test print from the lprint web ui also seems to take a number of seconds to print, though it does seem a couple seconds faster than any of my lprint trials above though I don't have an accurate way to time the difference.
I also tried converting the png manually to ZPL, I wasn't successful on that, but I did print some ZPL example labels by catting directly to /dev/usb/lp0. That went nearly instantaneously.
Given the speed of the cat ZPL test and the old filter driver test, I am pretty convinced this is not an issue with my printer or other hardware being slow.
I'm happy to try pretty much anything to make this work better if you have any suggestions. Thanks!