Re: CUPS should be the default print service in Debian/Sarge
On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 02:52:04PM +0100, Ross Burton wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 14:44, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > The last time I tried to use CUPS, I found it to be so user friendly
> > that I couldn't get it to do anything useful. Very pretty, less
> > functional; and the documentation was entirely inadequate.
> >
> > On the other hand, while lprng was anything but user-friendly, it was
> > simple and well-documented. Much more important to have something that
> > works before you go making it user-friendly!
>
> As a random reply, I've found CUPS to be easy to admin and maintain.
> There are actual documented APIs for accessing the print queue and
> spooler, and printing worked first time, even when printing on an inkjet
> printer on a Win98 box being shared across SMB.
>
> http://www.cups.org/documentation.php lists plenty of documentation,
> which is generally quite good IMHO.
>
> However, I am biased, as I package the GNOME CUPS packages... :)
My perception was that CUPS suffers from ignoring the Unix philosophy -
it only seems to work with CUPS printer drivers. There isn't one for
my printer. There's a ghostscript driver, and damned if I could make
foomatic work with an arbitrary ghostscript driver it didn't already
know about. Maze of twisty little configuration files, all useless.
I may be the only one, but I find printcap convenient. I may need a
man page or example every time I touch it, but I know right where
everything is!
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer
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