The future of cups-browsed
Just a couple of observations, which might be useful.
We read at
https://lists.cups.org/pipermail/cups-devel/2017-May/016988.html
that
> In small home networks and on mobile devices cups-browsed is not actually
> needed any more, as the IPP backend replaces it in this simple case of not
> needing load-balancing printer clusters and remote CUPS servers being CUPS
and its replacement utilises the ability of CUPS versions 2.2.4 and
later to browse DNS-SD broadcasts and create a temporary queue.
> 2. IPP backend - Lists printers discovered by DNS-SD, IPP network
> printers, IPP-over-USB printers, and remote CUPS queues, when the user
> selects one to print on, a temporary CUPS queue is created so that
> options can be displayed and the job be sent.
AFAICT, CUPS only enumerates temporary queues for remote, non-raw
queues and this would rule out display of some types of Tea4CUPS
queues, for example. I take the point but, in a case like this,
cups-browsed has the edge and a very useful part to play. There are
probably other use cases where losing a raw queue display would be
undesirabale.
Later in the linked mail:
> cups-browsed will be continued, to provide additional functionality,
> especially interoperability of CUPS 1.5.x or older with CUPS 1.6.x or
> newer, to create load-balancing printer clusters, and to allow complex
> filtering on which remote queues/printers one wants to see and which not.
Very pleased to know this, but note that the complex filtering is
not available with apps in unstable. Qt apps and libreoffice both
use CUPS' temporary queue feature. Let's say there are ten queues
displayed. When cups-browsed is installed it becomes the automatic
queue creator. There are no duplicated queues and the dialog still
shows ten queues.
If five of the cups-browsed managed queues are filtered out, they
are replaced by five of CUPS' temporary queues.
--
Brian.
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