[Desktop_architects] raw notes from drivers 12/01/2005 meeting

[Norm Jacobs]

Till Kamppeter wrote:

> Michael Sweet wrote:
>
>>> o USB vendor and product ID is bad because epson is always the same
>>> answer
>>> o have to use the IEEE 1284 device ID string can get from the printer
>>> with an I/O ctl
>>
>>
>>
>> CUPS already does this, but note that not all vendors provide a
>> serial number so connecting more than one device of the same model
>> is often problematic.
>>
>
> But I have one question here: If I enumerate the PPD files available 
> in /usr/share/cups/model (either by "lpinfo -m (-l)" or appropriate 
> CUPS API function) no information to match against the IEEE-1284 ID is 
> shown. Many PPDs have a "*1284DeviceID:" entry. If these get also 
> indexed into /etc/cups/ppds.dat and listed by "lpinfo -m" (or at least 
> by "lpinfo -m --ieee1284" to leave "lpinfo -m" backwards compatible) 
> then one would get a very reliable matching of PPDs to detected printers.
>
I agree, matching the 1284 device IDs is probably the most accurate means of
matching PPD files to printers for USB and parallel printers.  I noticed 
that one
of my network attached printers seems to supply the 1284 device ID as 
part of
it's response to IPP get-printer-attributes query.  I suspect that there 
are others
that do the same thing and that it's also available through a number of 
other
methods.  Using the printer make/model information from the PPD files 
doesn't
work as well as you might like, but in absence of a 1284 device ID, it 
supplies
a means of making a somewhat educated guess.

       -Norm