Help with custom page size support for non standard paper

Firstly, we appreciate any support you may be able to provide, we have already thrown considerable effort at this and it has been very time consuming and frustrating.
To support a number of business functions need to print to (non standard) continuous and mulitpart paper on a dot matrix printer. The (test) Mac is a 10.4.11 G4 laptop, the printer is an Oki Microline 520 (9 pin 80 column, IBM Proprinter, Microline or Epson FX personalities with a parallel interface) which has been networked via a HP JetDirext Ex Plus print server. That part appears to be operating correctly.
We have tried a number of drivers / printer personalities with varying levels of success:
ESP / EPSON 9-Pin Series CUPS v1.1 / Epson FX personality
ESP / OKIDATA 9-Pin Series CUPS v1.1 / Oki Microline personality
Ghostscript / epsonc / Epson Dot Matrix Foomatic PPD / Epson FX personality
Ghostscript / ibmpro / IBM ProPrinterII Foomatic PPD / IBM Proprinter personality
Ghostscript / okiibm / Oki Microline IBM compatible 9 pin Foomatic PPD / IBM Proprinter personality
There were no appropriate drivers in Gutenprint (5.2.3 version) The most successful is the okiibm / Oki Microline IBM compatible 9 pin settings, it can print A4 and honors the Printer Features Resolution settings in the print dialogue.
Q1: Should we see anything in the Printer Info / Installable Option, it is always blank ?
The issue is custom page sizes, we can manage / add Custom Pages Sizes via the Page Setup / Paper Size interface and they draw on the screen OK but they do not work at the printer (various issue at the printer such error messages, junk printing and wrong orientation):
Q2: Are we heading in the right direction or is there a better way to handle this ?
Q3: Would 10.5 solve all our problems, are the print drivers any better ?
Q4: Is this the correct way to specify custom page sizes, is this all we need to do ?
Q5: Is so how do we get the driver to respect the size, do we need another filter or something ?
Q6: Is it possible to add (by hand) custom page sizes to the ESP drivers or Foomatic PPD files so they they appear as a "standard" offering in the Page Setup / Paper Size interface ?
Sorry for the long / complicated post and thanks in advance for any advice / assistance.

Matt Broughton wrote:
Testing on 10.5.7, Tried both Oki 9-Pin Series 1.3 / Microline personality (no joy) and Epson 9-Pin Series 1.3 (this is a much better driver than 1.1) / Epson FX personality but not much joy with custom page sizes,
The Oki 9-pin Series 1.3 and the Epson 9-Pin Series 1.3 should produce the same results. The only difference in the PPDs is the printer model name.
After some testing, I find that the output is not the same despite the two PPDs being virtually identical. I did spot in the CUPS source code for the rastertoepson filter that there is some model name matching for Epson printers. Thus I can see where the output using the Oki 9-pin PPD could be different than when using the Epson 9-pin PPD.
but again once I imbedded the page size into the ppd some (but frustrating) luck. I can get it to respect the paper orientation and it prints well but I could not get the form length to work properly. At best over a print run of 7 labels it would creep up the label by about 0.1 inches / 2 mm.
Just for the fun of it, I made some additions to the Epson 9-pin 1.3 PPD. All I can say is that I could print a job to file. I have no way to know what it would look like on paper.
I did find that using a custom paper size did add some unwanted margins to the output bounding box. Putting the custom page size into the PPD seemed to get around that issue.
I added the following lines to the Epson 9-pin PPD 1.3--
<pre style="overflow: auto;font-size:small; font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; color: #222; background: #ddd; padding: .3em .8em .3em .8em; font-size: 9px;">*PageSize Label1/Label1: "<</PageSize[288 107.8]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageRegion Label1/Label1: "<<PageSize[288 107.8]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*ImageableArea Label1/Label1: "0 0 288.00 107.80"
*PaperDimension Label1/Label1: "288.00 107.80"</pre>
This adds a paper size with the 4 inch (288pt) width and 1.5 inch (107.8pt) height. That represents the 1.4 inch label and the 0.1 inch gap between labels. I set 0pt margins except for the bottom where is set the 0.1 inch (7pt) gap as the bottom margin.
The full diff in context is--
<pre style="overflow: auto;font-size:small; font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; color: #222; background: #ddd; padding: .3em .8em .3em .8em; font-size: 9px;">loki:~ matt$ diff -u /usr/share/cups/model/epson9.ppd ~/Desktop/epson9.ppd
--- /usr/share/cups/model/epson9.ppd 2009-02-20 20:16:53.000000000 -0600
+++ /Users/matt/Desktop/epson9.ppd 2009-06-06 20:37:06.000000000 -0500
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
*PageSize Legal/US Legal: "<</PageSize[612 1008]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize A4/A4: "<</PageSize[595 842]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageSize FanFoldUS/US Fanfold: "<</PageSize[1071 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
+*PageSize Label1/Label1: "<</PageSize[288 107.8]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*CloseUI: *PageSize
*OpenUI *PageRegion/Media Size: PickOne
*OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *PageRegion
@@ -50,17 +51,20 @@
*PageRegion Legal/US Legal: "<</PageSize[612 1008]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageRegion A4/A4: "<</PageSize[595 842]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageRegion FanFoldUS/US Fanfold: "<</PageSize[1071 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
+*PageRegion Label1/Label1: "<<PageSize[288 107.8]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*CloseUI: *PageRegion
*DefaultImageableArea: Letter
*ImageableArea Letter/US Letter: "18.00 18.00 594.00 774.00"
*ImageableArea Legal/US Legal: "18.00 18.00 594.00 990.00"
*ImageableArea A4/A4: "18.00 18.00 577.00 824.00"
*ImageableArea FanFoldUS/US Fanfold: "18.00 18.00 1053.00 774.00"
+*ImageableArea Label1/Label1: "0 0 288.00 107.80"
*DefaultPaperDimension: Letter
*PaperDimension Letter/US Letter: "612.00 792.00"
*PaperDimension Legal/US Legal: "612.00 1008.00"
*PaperDimension A4/A4: "595.00 842.00"
*PaperDimension FanFoldUS/US Fanfold: "1071.00 792.00"
+*PaperDimension Label1/Label1: "288.00 107.80"
*MaxMediaWidth: "1080.00"
*MaxMediaHeight: "86400.00"
*HWMargins: 18.00 18.00 18.00 18.00</pre>
I don't know if that will help you or not. Let us know what sort of progress you make.
Matt

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