Thursday, May 17, 2012

cups-1.6 will be loads of fun

I've spent a bit of time recently looking at the current state of what will become cups-1.6, and preparing a live ebuild for subversion head (net-print/cups-9999). My only conclusion is, the transition from 1.5 to 1.6 will give us all loads of fun time... Here are some of the highlights:
  • The serial and parallel port backends have been removed. Need USB or LAN now to talk to your printer.
  • The PHP and Perl scripting modules have been removed.
  • Remote printer discovery via CUPS, LDAP, or SLP is not supported anymore (what was known so-far as "browsing"). Instead you will need to use Zeroconf/Bonjour or Avahi.
  • The filter code that allowed to directly print images is gone. (Maybe just moved to a separate package.)
Nice, isn't it? Anyway...  if any of you feels like joining the printing team give me a shout!

edit, 21/May: most of the removed code just made its way into cups-filters, as several people pointed out in comments below... so no need to panic...
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10 comments:

  1. CoacherMay 18, 2012 at 12:23 AM

    OpenPrinting was planning to support missing features like CUPS discovery. Right now I can't find any related info on their website.
    Original message: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/158254

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  2. vivoMay 18, 2012 at 12:05 PM

    "
    The serial and parallel port backends have been removed. Need USB or LAN now to talk to your printer.
    "
    Thanks for blogging about it, this for me is a blocker and as such >=cups-1.6 will be masked forever here

    ReplyDelete
  3. PipeMay 18, 2012 at 2:11 PM

    Mac users can afford usb printers. It's sad that everybody else will have to get their parallel port support from cups-filters package though. Still better than being stuck with cups 1.5.

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  4. defaultMay 18, 2012 at 5:18 PM

    The OpenPrinting code is here:
    http://bzr.linuxfoundation.org/loggerhead/openprinting/cups-filters/files

    ReplyDelete
  5. AndreasMay 21, 2012 at 12:35 PM

    Yes indeed... most of the code that moved out just made its way into cups-filters. Which we already have in Gentoo; with cups-1.6 it will just become more or less mandatory. So, probably not big problems, just code restructuring. One of the big advantages of free software.

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  6. JohnMay 22, 2012 at 4:55 PM

    Wow, people still have parallel printers? Where do they get their ink/ribbons from? When was the last time anyone sold such a beast or a mobo with a parallel port on it? Given a decent printer can be had for less than the cost of an ink cartridge these days I really don't see that as such as issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMay 24, 2012 at 6:50 PM

      Sure, my 2001 LaserJet 1200 still runs great and printing quality (not the speed though :) ) beats many of the newer models.
      Supplies are still available in office stores

      Delete
    2. DavidMay 24, 2012 at 10:39 PM

      Yes, the parallel-port LaserJets are still in use many places. My own, and my organization's, work great.

      Delete
  7. UnknownJuly 13, 2012 at 6:40 AM

    parallel port jets are old ones, still all belive they are good and using. cheap ink cartridges

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousAugust 22, 2012 at 5:47 PM

    I had installed cups-1.6.1 and cups-filters-1.0.20 on my laptop with directly-connected USB printer (Canon PIXMA MP560). However, the last few lines of one-page documents were not printed, and the first few lines of the last page of multi-page documents were not printed. So I reverted to cups-1.5.3 and can print again. Any idea why cups-1.6.* is causing this problem?

    ReplyDelete