Zdenek Dohnal wrote: > Printer applications started as a transition technology - a way how to > support older printers once CUPS removes printer driver support - so for > now they are here for backward compatibility. The real issue here is the "once CUPS removes printer driver support" premise that makes a "transition technology" necessary in the first place. The change removes functionality that has been just working for decades. > Except for Gutenprint, I'm not aware of any printer driver provider > which plans to provide more specific options with a printer application. Which implies that, from a user perspective, there will be a noticeable loss of functionality. > They seem to be okay with AirPrint. So, how, if at all, can you configure an AirPrint printer? > AFAIK PAPPL (and even the old lprint which I packaged into Fedora last > year, but his web interface is going to substituted by PAPPL web ui in > the next release) provides a default web interface which you can use for > configuring printer options. >> >> From the end user perspective, the new approach brings only >> disadvantages. > Since PAPPL provides web ui and CLI, which you can use for configuring > your device, IMHO it is not much different from what CUPS provides right > now. A web interface is not a complete replacement for "what CUPS provides right now", which is a driver-independent key-value property interface that is used both by desktop environments and/or distributions to provide configuration interfaces in their native toolkit (e.g., system-config-printer, kde-print-manager, etc.) and by applications to allow changing printer settings for individual printouts from within the application. A web interface requires bringing up a web browser, manually pointing it to http://localhost:nnnn where nnnn is a port number that has to be manually looked up from some manual, and then using a web form (rather than a native dialog) to change any settings. And changing the settings for just one printout requires bringing up the web interface as previously described, then making the printout through the application, and then going back to the web interface to change the settings back, meaning you now have to deal with two applications (the browser and the actual application) instead of one. I never use http://localhost:631 to configure CUPS, it is just not practical (even though I happen to know the port number by heart, which is also not the case for the new PAPPL port). > CUPS developers (PWG+Openprinting) decided to remove deprecated > functionality (which has big issues regarding security and distribution) > in the future in favor of standardized, less hardware dependent > solution, which is supported by 98% of printers released since 2010. The > functionality has been deprecated for 11 years and still be only > deprecated (not removed) until there is a coverage for older devices by > printer applications and have some tools for installing older printers > via printer applications. If you try and fail to remove something for 11 years, that should be clear evidence that that something is actually needed and simply cannot be removed. > CUPS developers came up with printer application design for older device > users, so they don't have to buy a new device, created first three > printer applications - ippeveprinter (shipped in CUPS itself, under > cups-printerapp subpackage in Fedora), lprint (support for label > printers) and ps-printer-app (which covers postscript printers) -, plans > to implement printer applications for other widely packaged printer > drivers and publicly provides a documentation how to create printer > applications for corner use cases. And yet, that design is just not (and still not) a fully functional replacement for the functionality you are trying to remove and has achieved little to no adoption. That is the point where it is simply time to admit failure. Kevin Kofler _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
