On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 05:14:41PM +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote: > 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. The legacy CUPS *direct-attached* model simply doesn't work with containerized/sandboxed applications that are all the vogue these days. But if your printer was already non-local vs the system doing the printing (ie on "the network" somewhere) then this whole conversation is moot, because you haven't had to install a native driver locally for many years. > > 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. How so? I mean, whether you supply the printing options from the lp command line, the printer's web UI (this includes CUPS' webserver) or the system printing dialog the functionality will still be there. > > They seem to be okay with AirPrint. > > So, how, if at all, can you configure an AirPrint printer? The same way you configure any other printer; ie via its designated configuration interface. This can be the printer control panel, an embedded web server, or arbitrary print-time options; whatever the printer and application/platform supports. > 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. IPP already supports arbitrary key-value properties. That isn't the problem; instead it's getting generic driver/device-independent configuration tools/interfaces to present them properly. These interfaces represent their own level of hell, and they are _all_ broken in some way or another, even with the mature PPD-based CUPS flow. (And I say that as a Gutenprint developer who has to deal with the support headaches..) > 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, No, it's a standard property, and I'd presume a "generic IPP print dialog" would have a big fat button that, when mashed, takes you to the appropriate configuration interface. > 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. Honestly? The simplest approach is to copy what every other platform out there already does, and simply drop support for sufficiently old hardware. Fedora routinely does this, why should printers be any different? Meanwhile. The ultimate goal has not yet been realized, but with each incremental milestone along the way, it's getting closer. Ironically, the existing Legacy CUPS + cups-filters + drivers printing flow has been the largest beneficiary of these improvements; I wouldn't consider that a failure. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachy pizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) High Springs, FL speachy (freenode)
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