Bug#337845: ijsgutenprint: Package description is not useful

[7nrmi1s02@sneakemail.com]

Roger Leigh rleigh-at-whinlatter.ukfsn.org |bugs-debian| wrote:
> Thomas Prokosch <7nrmi1s02@sneakemail.com> writes:
>>I just found this package and have asked myself what it does.
>>I do have Gutenprint installed and running, I have Ghostscript
>>in use, so what is the package about?
> 
> The description could be improved.  I'll fix this for the next upload.

Thanks. I appreciate that.

> ijsgutenprint is an IJS server (driver), which communicates with
> Ghostscript (IJS client) using the IJS (InkJet Server) communications
> protocol.  IJS is a method for separating ghostscript drivers from
> ghostscript, to allow ghostscript to be more extensible.

This description tells me what ijsgutenprint is, but I still do not know
what it does. I do not know whether I should install it when I do not
know what problem it tries to solve.

I understand that Ghostscript executes Postscript commands and uses them
for building up a raster representation of the page. The format of the
raster representation is defined either by internal Ghostscript drivers
or by external drivers which are accessed via the IJS communications
protocol.

> The lack of a good description is basically because ijsgutenprint is
> not something an end user should use directly; tools like apsfilter
> should take care of the setup for you.  Or (better) use CUPS with
> cupsys-driver-gutenprint.

Is cupsys-driver-gutenprint functionally equivalent to ijsgutenprint? I
do have cupsys-driver-gutenprint installed, and I don't quite get it
where the ijsgutenprint package belongs in the overall picture.

As you say an end user should not install it, so I was curious which
packages install ijsgutenprint as a dependency:

% apt-cache rdepends ijsgutenprint
ijsgutenprint
Reverse Depends:
  ijsgimpprint
  gutenprint-doc
  foomatic-db-gutenprint

The only interesting package seems to be foomatic-db-gutenprint, which I
don't use but leads me to the conclusion that ijsgutenprint and
cupsys-driver-gimpprint are functionally equivalent.

As a sidenote, I have installed and read gutenprint-doc and
libgutenprint-doc before filing this bug report. Unfortunately
Gutenprint documentation is a little bit thin as far as the Gutenprint
architecture is concerned.

Thanks for your patience,
Thomas