Printer status: stopped. This is murder.

Silviu Marin-Caea silviu_marin-caea at stargame.ro
Mon Nov 26 23:15:03 PST 2007


This is a case where a small bad design decision destroys all the good that CUPS does.

The situation couldn't be more ordinary: a USB printer (HP F4180).

If this printer is turned off when the computer is on, it will enter the stopped/paused state and remain so forever.

To the average user this means exactly: LINUX PRINTING DOES NOT WORK.  It's as simple and clear as that.

To get it to print again, the user should give the cupsenable command or use the web interface.  Do you expect mom and pop to know about "cupsenable" and "http://localhost:631"?  Really.

Guys, you brought linux printing forward from the middle ages.  Don't leave it in the 1980s, please, we need it in the present.

Whatever might be the reason cups doesn't retry printing, is it worth sacrificing usability so brutally?

openSUSE 10.3, cups-1.2.12

Thank you




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