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Bug#433555: ITP: cnijfilter -- Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS



Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Nikolaus Schulz <microschulz@web.de>

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* Package name    : cnijfilter
  Version         : 2.70
  Upstream Author : Canon Inc. 
* URL             : http://cweb.canon.jp/drv-upd/bj/other.html
* License         : partly GPL, partly non-free
  Description     : Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

 This driver provides printing functions for Canon inkjet printers
 operating under the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) environment.
 This includes setting printer-specific options like printing quality,
 quiet operation mode, maintenance functions like cleaning the print
 heads, and monitoring printer status like ink level, paper jam, cover
 opened, and so on.


NOTES
- -----

I am not sure if the wnpp bug is the right place for such annotations,
but there are *so* many peculiarities with this package, which makes me
feel the most important should be mentioned here.

This is actually about several packages, and it is a *very* messy thing.
For a start, there is no canonical english web site for these packages,
the URL in the package description is japanese only.  (Ugh!)  If you are
like me and don't speak japanese, you may want to proxy the site with a
translation service like [1].  There is also an ftp address for most
packages, but it doesn't work for everyone:
ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux.

Since the licence is partly non-free, I will post it to debian-legal in
the next days for advice.  (I am optimistic that it allows distribution.)

If all goes well, there will be several Debian packages for each
supported printer.  I have not yet determined how these are best
organized, both as source and binary packages; unfortunately the
upstream tarballs are non-standard (in lots of ways), for example 
their organization varies (!, *argh*) from split tarballs to big,
combined source rpm's (oh boy!).

The non-free material from Canon is a couple of binary-only libraries,
covered by a special licence.  (Ouch!)  All other programs are GPL,
plus, where needed, a special exception allowing to link against the
said libraries. 

The packages are actively developed upstream (good!), but not maintained
(what?!): each released version supports the then-current printer models
only, and is not maintained after release. (Oh ${DEITY}!)  

So, I plan to make versioned source packages like cnijfilter2.7, and try
to backport some stuff to older versions that support older printers.
The mapping between driver versions and supported printer models is
here (but see the note below). 

v2.0: BJ S500.
v2.1: BJ F900/BJ F9000/BJ S300.
v2.2: Pixus 550i/Pixus 850i/Pixus 950i.
v2.3: i250/i255.
v2.4: Pixus 560i/Pixus 860i/Pixus 990i.
v2.5: Pixma iP1000/Pixma iP1500/Pixus iP3100/Pixus iP4100/Pixus iP8600.
v2.6: iP2200/iP4200/iP7500/iP6600D/MP500.
v2.7: iP3300/MP510/iP4300/MP600/MP160/iP2500 series/iP1800 series/iP90.

Depending on the country, at least some of the model names varied.  E.g.
the "Pixus 550i" was sold as such in Japan, but in Europe (and I think
in USA, too) it was called "Canon i550". 

Since I have such a i550 printer, I've started with v2.2 of the driver.
When these packages are ready and tested, I'll continue the way up to
v2.7.  Testers with printers listed above are welcome!  (Oh, you say you
want to co-maintain this evil thing?  Even better!  But you have been
warned. :-)

Finally note that, as of v2.6, the upstream packages were renamed from
"bjfilter" to "cnijfilter".  So much for the broad overview; I hope I
didn't forget anything essential.  I'll probably turn up soon with some
more dirty details on debian-mentors. :-) 

Cheers, 
Nikolaus


[1] http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-deb.171206
Locale: LANG=de_DE@euro, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

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