Testing, testing, testing. It prints!

Back in 2008 Nick Ellery noticed that the default printer test page used more ink that it really needed to: Bug #298935 (“test print uses far too much ink”). Millions and millions of these pages get printed every year, so any saving in ink will be amplified. In addition, it still had the pre-2010 Ubuntu logomark: Bug #933489 (“Ubuntu Printer test page has old branding”). Hopefully, the ink saving will help save the planet and everyone will benefit from something slightly prettier.

Scan of new Ubuntu 12.04 Printer Test Page. The design is scaled to fit any size, not just A4 and US-Letter

With the first Ubuntu 12.04 Beta release now out and having been in prepartion over the last fortnight, there’s been a chance to look over and see if the Design Team can assist with reponding to any bugs that might have been missed for too long.

One year ago there were a number of good suggestions for making the test printouts to be more reusable, for instance by including a calendar or origami shape and would be good to incorporate in the future. Perhaps you can come up with a good design and suggest it for the next release cycle building up to Ubuntu 12.10?

Thank you to Lucas Camargo for experimenting with thinning the previous template. To Emily Maher on the design team for working on a more compact circular design that matches the rest of Ubuntu (and should use even less ink). And to Lars Ubernickel and Till Kamppeter for writing and uploading the new bannertopdf support code that pulls in the design and sends it out to the printer with debugging information appended.