Description

Ink is a command line tool for checking the ink level of your locally connected printer on a system which runs Linux or FreeBSD. Canon BJNP network printers are supported too. It makes use of libinklevel. A list of currently supported printers is available. You can download the sourcecode. If you prefer another kind of user interface have a look at the libinklevel homepage for other frontends.

News

14/07/2018	Release of version 0.5.3. Support for parallel port printers and the Solaris OS have been removed. FreeBSD support has been improved. Additional cartridge types (e.g. orange) have been added.
06/02/2015	Release of version 0.5.2. FreeBSD support has been added. The -d option has been removed. Some error messages have been fixed.
20/02/2010	Release of version 0.5.1. A new parameter for a threshold limiting the ink levels displayed to the ones below or equal to the threshold has been introduced. A man page has been added. The build system has been changed to autoconf and automake.
29/01/2009	Release of version 0.5.0. This version requires at least libinklevel version 0.8.0. Support for Canon BJNP network printers has been added. Support for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris has been added.
28/05/2007	Release of version 0.4.1. A bug in the ink cartridge naming has been removed.
14/03/2007	Release of version 0.4.0. This release requires the newest libinklevel (v0.7.0 or higher). Two new parameters have been added: One for querying the version information of ink and libinklevel, and one for directly specifying the usb device the printer is connected to.
09/03/2007	Release of version 0.3.2rc4. Adaption to changes in current libinklevel. This version requires libinklevel version 0.6.6rc6 or higher.
05/10/2006	Release of version 0.3.2rc3. Error handling has been improved. This version requires libinklevel version 0.6.6rc5 or higher.
16/09/2006	Release of version 0.3.2rc2. Ink has been adapted to the changes in libinklevel. This version requires libinklevel version 0.6.6rc4 or higher.
06/09/2006	Release of version 0.3.2rc1. Ink has been adapted to the new interface of libinklevel. This version requires libinklevel version 0.6.6rc3 or higher.
03/04/2006	Release of version 0.3.1. A bug which prevented proper operation on PPC systems has been fixed.
26/02/2004	Project moved to Sourceforge.
03/12/2003	Release of version 0.3. Requires libinklevel version 0.6 or greater. Error handling has been improved.
07/09/2003	Release of version 0.2. Now also supports Epson printers.
25/08/2003	Initial version released and web page set up.

Printers supported

All printers supported by libinklevel attached via USB are supported. Canon BJNP network printers are supported too.

Screenshot

License

This software is licensed under the GPL version 2. It comes with no warranty.

Download

Stable release

• ink-0.5.3.tar.gz (sources)

Installation and usage

Many distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian etc.) offer prebuilt packages of ink.

If you intend to install from source you need to have gcc or another compiler installed. libinklevel ≥ 0.8.0 is required.

tar xzf ink-0.5.3.tar.gz
cd ink-0.5.3
./configure
make
make install

On RPM based systems with the rpmbuild command available you can create RPM packages by running:

tar xzf ink-0.5.3.tar.gz
cd ink-0.5.3
./configure
make rpm

This will create RPM files for you.

Run the program as follows:

ink -p <port> [-n <portnumber>] [-t <threshold>]

where port is "usb" and portnumber is the number of the port to which your printer is connected. The portnumber is optional and defaults to 0. The optional threshold limits the ink levels displayed to the ones below or equal to the given threshold.

You can query the first BJNP Canon network printer found like this:

ink -p bjnp

You can query a BJNP Canon network printer also by specifying its URI like this:

ink -b bjnp://<hostname or IP address>

You can query the version numbers of ink and libinklevel like this:

ink -v

Feedback

Send comments, suggestions, critics to Markus Heinz.