Re: PPD provision for Foomatic/ijsgutenprint
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 09:06:48PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> The Foomatic data may be used to generate a PPD file in order to use
> ijsgutenprint with a spooler such as CUPS or LPRng. However, I don't
> know quite how many people are choosing to go this route; I recommend
> CUPS and cupsys-driver-gutenprint as a better-tested alternative
> (though the output is typically identical).
It is simpler, though CUPS has its own problems. Printing is never easy
under Unix, looks like it never will be :(
> I was considering providing an ijsgutenprint-ppds package with the
> PPDs pre-generated, so that using ijsgutenprint is easier for
> non-wizards.
I just think that should be made easier. I've documented how to do it
for LPRng (mainly so i don't forget) [1]
> * LPRng users then still have to set up a printcap entry to invoke
> foomatic using this PPD.
LPRng users have to do that anyhow, it's not really PPD's fault but more
that LPRng is a manual setup thing.
> Any thoughts on anything we could do better? I'm particularly
> interested what would be most useful for LPRng; CUPS is already well
> catered for.
The main thing is that configuring lpr or lprng for anything is hard and
it should be easier. Compiling the PPDs makes that a little easier, but
to me not significantly as there are still a lot of "other" steps in
the process.
To me, something like lprngtool but one that was ppd aware would be the
way to go. If someone invented a special 34hr/day expander machine I'd
write it :)
I probably should subscribe to debian-printing too, never knew we had
that.
- Craig
[1] http://small.dropbear.id.au/docs/lprngfoo.html
--
Craig Small GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE 95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
Eye-Net Consulting http://www.enc.com.au/ MIEE Debian developer
csmall at : enc.com.au ieee.org debian.org
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