[cups.general] Cups

[John]

Hello Suse
I have no wish to enter a debate on this subject but it seems to me that this 
whole area and that of installation in general is not at all suitable for a 
typical 21st century pc user. MS must be laughing their socks off. I can well 
understand why they take the rest seriously though and even copy it.

On Wednesday 12 May 2004 07:20, Johannes Meixner wrote:
>
> http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/09/jsmeix_print-einrichten-90.html
>
> In the "release notes" which are shown at the end of the
> installation it is mentioned and there is an URL which
> leads to the above explanatory article.

 A note did appear following the installation of this purchased suse 9 
professional installation. I opened it - thought that I would come back to 
that shortly - it disappeared as soon as I closed it and I have never been 
able to find it again. This is an admirable demonstration of the power of the 
system but is absolutely useless to a user  especially one who hasn't got a 
working printer yet or some one else to set it up for them.

For some reason the link takes me to the document directory on my none root 
desktop.

> There is no need to change the CUPS documentation because
> it is perfecly documented in the CUPS documentation
> how the various settings in cupsd.conf work.

A lot of the documentation is written on the basis that the reader allready 
understands the subject. The only bits I found useful on the subject that 
currently concerns me where marked default. The etc/cups/cupsd.conf was not 
in a default state. I wouldn't have had any problems at all if it was. Also 
if I had followed the install a printer instructions they would not have 
worked. 

> But all kind of user notification and documentation cannot help
> when it is simply ignored.
You may gather from the above that lots of it has been read. I have also read 
the booklets that came with the distribution. The 1st book is excellent. The 
2nd admin effort is not so good I would go as far as to say poor.

I feel that I must also comment on yast. Given the apparently notorious nature 
of ppd files it would be far better to warn the user with the existing error 
messages and then proceed to install it. I know that the ppd file will work 
with cups as I have printed with it. I only did 2 things before the printer 
stopped working because cups can no longer access the file. I rebooted due to 
a bug in kde and I also started a printer installation with yast. I aborted 
at the printer configuration point without do anything. Yast also had no need 
to do anything. Maybe cups did it. I do not know and nobody else seems to 
know or what to do to fix it. Clearly a lot of particepants know a lot about 
cups, linux and unix all to no avail.

As to samsung. They have mad an effort in comparison with other printer 
manufactures. The end result does not match windows though. This doesn't seem 
to be down to the printer as it does emulate a well known protocol. I am yet 
to determine if this limitation is due to the language, cups, the ppd file or 
linux. Few people would be prepared to take the time.

Regards
     john