Re: Printing woes

[frank brierley <frank brierley id au>]

Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 16:45, frank wrote:
>
>
> Most (and I would like to claim that virtually all) questions to the
> list receive answers. Of course frequently not the answer one might be
> hoping for.
Yes, Andreas you're right and I offer an apology for not calming my 
nerves before writing.
> You really haven't ever explained why it is not feasible for you to run
> cups, a printing system that is reasonably supported rather than the
> ancient lpd.
There are two main reasons for choosing not to install cups.

Firstly, lpd does everything I need from a printing system, it's 
configurable to all my printers, it spools, it can out source to 
ghostscript hence is capable of printing anything that might go in a 
postscript file, it is network capable, and is browesable for windows 
via samba

And secondly, it doesn't require the installation of any additional 
packages as it comes as a component of the operating system (FreeBSD). 
Of course for my non-postscript printers ghostscript is required and for 
the lonely windows machines, samba but those are required in one form or 
another by cups also.
> Perhaps because the traditional /etc/printcap listing provides virtually
> no information about the capabilities of a printer?
I imagine there are other reasons for employing cups similar to the one 
you've suggested.  lpd does little beyond catch a print job and spool it 
to a printer.  But when using gnome-print's interface and specifying lpd 
as the printer, lpd catches the job and prints just fine.  This suggests 
gnome-print merely forwards a postscript docement which lpd has no 
problem with.

> Andreas

gnome-print appears to enjoy a close relationship with cups so couldn't 
the system be checked for running cups servers? If the appropriate ones 
are not found, couldn't printer names be harvested from the printcap file?

lpd is available on all the unix systems I'm aware of, and it works, so 
why not allow it to complement cups?  cups will always be available for 
those who find lpd to be insufficient for their needs, and lpd for those 
who don't need the additional functionality.

Please don't take this as a critism of the gnumeric or gnome-print 
projects.  Instead this be considered an suggested enhancement.

yours

Frank