[Printing-architecture] Concept for PPD-less CUPS-spooled printing on Bonjour-discovered network printers

[Michael Sweet]

Till,

On Oct 30, 2013, at 6:18 AM, Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> What is required from a GUI is that as soon as the user selects a
> printer for printing (or with the default printer when just opening the
> dialog) is that if the printer is such PPD-less queue, to poll the
> printer via IPP (code example below) to get its capabilities, show the
> user-settable options on the dialog's option panel (like PPD options)
> and send the job accompanied with the option settings, including the
> ones which the user has not changed and the ones which have only one
> choice (and so are not changeable). The job itself should be in PDF
> format and (if the printer supplies appropriate info) in a page size
> supported by the printer.

Till, I am curious why you are not using the CUPS APIs from 1.6 and later for this?

Also, I have my concerns of this approach - with cupsd not knowing anything about the printer, and with there being no way for a non-aware app to know what the printer's capabilities are, I foresee a lot of interoperability issues.

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Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair