Comment 19 for bug 1031468

I just finally went through and manually deleted the printers and did a full install which is gut wrenching because hp-* scripts are full of bugs with little useful debug info at times and with only hints requiring Googling.

I always hit https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/89108. (Scanner plugin fails to install due to python 3 usage, use python 2 to hack around it.) Which causes a strong deterrence from installing and uninstalling hplip once it's working.

SOLUTION:
It would appear the Gentoo hplip package does not upgrade the binary spanner plugin when upgrading. Please advise that you agree with my speculation here, as I am oblivious to where the binary plugin is installed on the system after performing hp-setup. Again, hplip negates to notify users where the plugin files are unzipped/untarred to, making system administration all the more difficult!

I agree with you on buying printers without requiring binary drivers, but I was, again, oblivious there were multifunction devices with scanners not requiring a binary driver/plugin. It looks like your device is more recent, with the option of an open driver.