HP printers and OS-X

[from 18 Jun 2010]
Another pain installing a printer.
This time an HP Color LaserJet 3600n on the mac network.
The official drivers work fine with BonJour and appletalk, but WILL NOT work with any sensible IP connection. (and it's an install program)

Answer:

1. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/hpijs
2. download all three images
3. open each image and get the installer package out.
4. use remote desktop to install all three (hpijs last) on the server and each workstation.
5. install the printer - as a printer ! - on the server - It should auto detect the driver now :-)
6. use Server Manager to add the IPP and LPR sharing options to the queue
7. use Workgroup Manager to assign the printer to the computers
8. test

The three parts are:

1. HPIJS for Mac OS X
2. Foomatic-RIP
3. Ghostscript for Mac

Quote from the site above:

Package Description

Release Date: February 26, 2009
The HPIJS driver is the first free, open-source driver issued by HP for their DeskJet and LaserJet printers. For most supported printers, this driver produces output quality equivalent to the proprietary HP drivers. In photo mode, with photo paper, the output quality is very high, especially for the HP DeskJet 990C and later models, which auto-detect the paper type in hardware. Photo printing is fully supported in the newer 6- and 7-ink models.
A major advantage of using this driver over those supplied by HP is the direct interface between HPIJS and the native CUPS spooler, which allows printing from any printer over any available connection such as USB, AppleTalk, TCP/IP (via LPD and IPP), HP JetDirect, and shared windows printers via SAMBA. Additionally, this driver utilizes the existing Mac OS X USB "backend" and thus does not install any software that might interfere with standard USB operation.