Re: oo should Suggest lpr, not cupsys-bsd
[As before, please CC.]
On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 02:33, Chris Halls wrote:
> Hi Jeff, thanks for your feedback.
>
> On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 01:16:58AM -0500, Jeff Licquia wrote:
> > I'm flattered, but I don't think that this is correct. The current
> > standard print system for Debian is still good ol' lpr, and people
> > wanting to declare a relationship with a print system should probably
> > reference that package, rather than cupsys-bsd or lprng. (Unless they
> > need an explicit dependency, of course, but I don't think that's the
> > case here; most people who need to depend on CUPS client capability
> > depend on libcupsys2.) This will ensure that lprng fans aren't asked to
> > remove their beloved print spooler in favor of some ungodliness. :-)
>
> I added the Suggests as an attempt to help people who are using CUPS
> already, together with this text in the README:
>
> If you are using CUPS and install the cupsys-bsd package, OpenOffice.org
> will automatically detect your printer queues.
>
> It is really just a hint because many people don't realise that installing
> cupsys-bsd is an easier way to use printers with OOo. OOo also works with
> CUPS directly, but you have to add the printer queues manually with the
> 'spadmin' tool. lpr/lprng installs work out of the box AFAIK, so I didn't
> do anything special or mention them in the Suggests.
This is very odd.
Does OOo link to the CUPS API via -lcups[image]? If so, all information
that's available via a BSD command should be more easily obtainable from
the CUPS API, since that's how the commands in cupsys-bsd get them.
Thus, the requirement to use spadmin without cupsys-bsd is very strange;
why they wouldn't make calls to CUPS to autodetect printers is beyond
me.
If OOo doesn't link in the CUPS API, then it should be pulling printer
info by executing print programs. In that capacity, I would expect lpr
or lprng to be equivalent to cupsys-bsd for all intents and purposes.
Moreover, cupsys-bsd wouldn't be just recommended for printing via OOo;
it would be required.
The other possibility is that OOo can recognize SysV printing systems
and use them, but can't autodetect the available queues via SysV only.
That also seems strange, for the same reason as the CUPS API case is
strange: you can get that information just as easily with SysV commands.
> I haven't heard of any
> lpr or lprng users interpreting my Suggests as a call to replace the print
> system.
No, I would imagine not. My main point, though, is that OOo shouldn't
be print-system-specific if at all possible.
> > CUPS people don't need to fear this; cupsys-bsd Provides lpr, so all
> > will be well.
>
> What if I changed it to Suggests: cupsys-bsd | lpr? I know it not strictly
> necessary to include cupsys-bsd, but many users of OOo+CUPS have not realised
> that OOo printing is so much easier if it is installed and I would like to
> continue to convey the hint to those people.
I'm not sure. If the Suggests: cupsys-bsd is truly a CUPS-only
requirement, and other print spoolers are picked up OK, then the current
relationship is probably correct. As I mentioned above, though, it's a
very curious limitation.
You might want to rely on the Suggests that's already in cupsys for
cupsys-bsd. (I just noticed that I need to add an equivalent Suggests
to cupsys-client, so you can rely on that Suggests even though it
doesn't exist yet. :-) But that's your call to make.
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