Set up a multifuction gadget, Epson Stylus Office BX300F

I just bought a new multifunction or All-in-one gadget, Epson Stylus Office BX300F and how I added the device as printer & scanner on Linux is described here.
With this device you can: copy the document, scan the document to a file, send/receive fax and print the document. (Note:This device doesn't come with USB cable.)

Let us do it step by step.

1. After hardware set-up, first of all do not forget to check up the copier and fax.

2. Connect the USB cable from your device to your computer, if you have cups already installed, it will detect your gadget automatically. Or check the connection with

$ sudo lsusb

In my case, I have my printer HP LaserJet 1300 as first printer which I already configured the cups, so the new device was immediately recognized by cups. If you do not have cups install before, please install "cups" packages to allow the printing configuration much easier. After cups installation, you can now add new printer or set your printing configuration by cups by typing the following url at your browser:
http://localhost:631.

Here are the properties of my printer (Click on the Right-most tab to view):

Description: EPSON Stylus Office BX300F
Location:
Driver: Epson Stylus Office BX300F - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.4 (color)
Connection: usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Office%20BX300F
Defaults: job-sheets=none, none media=na_letter_8.5x11in


If, for some reasons, "cups" cannot find the driver for your gadget or similar hardware, you probably need to install the printer driver manually. See further step to search for your printer driver.

3. Next step, I installed "xsane" for scanner and started xsane, however I received the message that it could not find the scanner device!
That meant, no proper scanner driver had been installed. Let's visit Avasys, it has all kinds of linux drivers for various gadgets.
(http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/) Select your model listed there and the page will lead you to the driver for your device, here I found drivers for my Epspon printer and scanner.


$ sudo dpkg -i iscan_2.24.0-4_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i pipslite_1.4.0-5_i386.deb

Now let us test the scanner; try "xsane" again!

4. The last step is to configure your xsane. One remarkable point I found was output scanned with 300 dpi for pdf or ps was always too large and document with 150 dpi has poor quality. (I expect some resolution around 200 dpi would be good but there was no option for 200 dpi but 75,150,300,600,1200 and 2400) What I did was saving the document as JPEG and converted JPEG to postscript from Gimp and set the compression scale of JPEG to yield the quality around 80-85% then rescaled image as necessary with Gimp. Saving postscript from JPEG also produces a large file, applying "ps2pdf" to convert file from postscript to pdf generates a very good result. That's it!

Qt and Symbian

After Nokia took over Trolltech in 2008, it has been foreseen that Qt would come to be part of mobile phone development very soon. Symbian and Maemo (now also known as MeeGo) developers are moving quickly to Qt for GUI application. Yesterday, I managed to start off my first Qt app before bid farewell to Symbian end of this month and the following info is my quick glance of Qt resources from Symbian developer perspective.

- Qt for the Symbian Platform (Product Overview)
- Using Qt and Symbian C++ Together from developer.symbian.org. This will guide Symbian developer to integrate Symbian to Qt more smoothly. The info in the page conveys the information e.g., Converting Active Objects to Signals & Slots, Converting between QString and Descriptor,Exceptions & Error Handling, et cetera.
- Qt Carbide.c++ IDE. To configure Carbide.c++ for Qt if it is prefered to QtCreator.
- Qt Creator with the Symbian Platform. Its build-in Help is superb.
- qmake Manual. Knowing of qmake to handle the project file (.pro) is mandatory. You need to know few extra specific parameters for Symbian, the manual will help you out.

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We only part to meet again. ~John Gay~

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