[Foomatic] Using usb IDs for autodetection

Johannes Meixner jsmeix at suse.de
Tue Apr 13 01:45:03 PDT 2004


Hello,

On Apr 8 15:16 Joe Shaw wrote (shortened):
> On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 10:50 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> > Of course I understand your intention very well but you may
> > find out that it is very very much work for only a little bit
> > better printer setup.
> 
> I'd argue that the user experience would be greatly improved.

But
http://primates.ximian.com/~rml/blog/archives/000395.html
reads:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
... After plugging in ... The "Add a Printer" tool appears ...
She is offered the opportunity to configure the printer (specify
its name, model, and type) ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I.e. there is no full automated configuration required.
Only the configuration tool should start automatically.
This is already working (at least if you use KDE on Suse Linux).
And if the printer is connected via parallel port or USB during the
installation then most models are even set up full automated.

I don't see a _great_ improvement when the user must not select
the printer model manually in those cases when the manufacturer
and model string comparsion doesn't find a suitable PPD file.
It is very easy for the user to select the model manually because
the user can read the model name from the label on the printer
and printers are not too often sold under many different labels.
In contrast the user may not know the model name of built in
devices like graphics card, network card or sound card
which are often sold under many different labels.

By the way:
Up to now I didn't have one single customer question  what to do
when a printer was listed but not autodetected or autoconfigured
but there are many customer questions what to do when a printer is
not listed.


Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX AG, Maxfeldstrasse 5                 Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/




More information about the Printing-foomatic mailing list