QTR-Quadtone RIP

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been asked before.

I have just started to use QTR with my Epson 3800 in order to see
whether I can improve the quality of my B&W prints over what I can get
out of the Epson ABW drivers.

Using the Epson ABW driver I always seem to be getting a slight
'greenish-gray' cast on the prints. It looks like this has dissapeared
when using QTR and some of the default curves provided. For the moment
I am printing on Harman Gloss FB Al so I have used the curves provided
in the 'Files' section with the blending formula as suggested to
combine 3 of the curves. 

Anyhow a couple of questions I now have:

1) Continually looking at these prints is driving me up the wall and
now I'm finding it hard to determine which print has a cast if any. Is
there any 'scientific' way to determine if a cast exists on a print ?
or even a methodical way to determine this ?

2) I believe the next step to using QTR to its maximum potential would
be to profile my printer and then feed the data to QTR to obtain the
optimal curve information ? Is there anyway to do this without the
expensive hardware required ? Or any rough approximations I can make ?

3) When using QTR I can't see any way to soft-proof the image on the
screen to know what my print will look like. How do I go about doing
this ?

It would be great if someone could help with any of these questions !

Rgds
Rick