Debian packages of cpdb-libs and cpdb-backend-cups
Thorsten,
you have probably followed OpenPrinting and seen that for using CUPS 3.x
(or any CUPS as Snap package) the printing functionality needs changes,
especially the print dialogs must be able to work all-IPP without using
PPD files and also need to cope with temporary CUPS queues. So they all
need to get updated.
As this will not be the last major change on CUPS and we also want to
ease the integration of any new, upcoming cloud printing services, we
are separating off the support code for communicating with the print
technologies in use (CUPS, clod printing service, ...). The
communication will go into backends, one for each print technology, the
Common Print Dialog Backends. Each backend will be maintained by the
maintainer of the respective print technology (CUPS backend by
OpenPrinting). The print dialogs need a common interface to talk with
the backends by D-Bus and do not need to directly communicate with the
print service. So if we change CUPS, we change the CUPS backend
appropriately and print dialogs continue to work without the GUI and app
maintainers have to run after each CUPS change.
See also
https://openprinting.github.io/achievements/#common-print-dialog-backends
This would require in Debian to package cpdb-libs and cpdb-backend-cups
and then change GUI libraries and apps which already support CPDB to
actually use it. Up to now this is at least GTK4, others to come.
But the more urgent reason for adding cpdb-libs and cpdb-backend-cups to
Debian is not this, but that we can build GTK4 in Debian with printing
via CPDB and not directly with CUPS. This way we will get a smaller
delta between the Debian and Ubuntu packages of GTK4. This would be
awesome and reduce the maintenance burden a lot.
The same will happen for other software in the future: Qt, LibreOffice,
Chromium Browser, Firefox, Thunderbird ...
Thorsten, would you introduce the packages cpdb-libs and
cpdb-backend-cups (they are both from OpenPrinting) into Debian? You can
use the Ubuntu packages as base for that, as they are already in Ubuntu
and tested there.
Thanks in advance
Till
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