GULP -> usr LPRng for lpq/lpc/lpq/lprm code?

[Markus Fleck <fleck xmailer informatik uni-bonn de>]

Hi!

If the "gulp" printing interface is to incorporate lpr/lpq etc.
code instead of running external programs, I'd suggest borrowing
from the LPRng code (http://www.start.com/lprng) which is GPL'ed
and is amongst the best (and most compatible to anything) systems
around. Although LPRng uses its own library of utility functions,
which might make integration with libgnome a bit more difficult,
if would be best to find a way to use the LPRng sources "as-is"
to make it easier to incorporate updated versions - even the
"lpq" command doesn't seem to be implemented the same by all
vendors' implementations, and LPRng is updated frequently to
work around existing bugs and incompatibilities.

It should be noted that the "lpq" text is formatted by the
print server. This makes it hard to parse anything there,
because every vendor sort of uses their own format.

I am actually unsure whether any "lpr" protocol code should
be included - using locally installed tools (with an option
to also use System-V-style tools, lp/cancel etc. instead)
would definitely the most portable option, and it could also
be extended to use entirely different ways to submit print
jobs (e.g. using SAMBA). The problem of parsing lpq output
remains, however, and I can't see an easy solution for that.

There is a simple Tcl/Tk front-end for LPRng's lpq, lprm and
lpr commands - just for inspiration, I put a screenshot up at

  <http://cs.bonn.edu/~fleck/printop/>

This tool is, of course, LPRng-specific in that it can only
parse lpq info generated by an LPRng print server. There is
probably no portable way to do even simple things like getting
a list of available printers in a portable way - most
vendors' tools parse /etc/printcap directly to get a
list of hosts, but then, on a System-V box like Solaris,
there is no /etc/printcap, but instead a totally incompatible
/etc/lp directory with several subdirectories.

There is a set of very good slides from the LISA '97 UNIX
system administration conference by the LPRng author,
Patrick Powell, at

  <ftp://ftp.astart.com/pub/LPRng/LISA97.tgz>

which gives a good overview of the LPD protocol and the
various problems with non-RFC1179-conforming implementations.

Yours,
Markus.

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