[cups.general] [ANNOUNCE] PyKota v1.24 Final is out

[Jerome Alet]

Hi there,

I'm very pleased to announce that PyKota v1.24 Final is out.

PyKota is the most versatile print accounting and quota enforcement 
solution for CUPS.

Entirely written in Python, it is distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation from :

  http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation

Free access to the complete source code is available to all through
subversion, but Official packages are only available to subcribers
or people who own a support contract.

Summary of changes since 1.23HotFix2 :

    - MySQL and SQLite are now supported as database backends, 
      in addition to PostgreSQL and OpenLDAP.
      
    - Improved speed when managing many entries at the same time
      by an order of magnitude. All management commands now
      display the percent done while running (and when not
      redirected).
      
    - The pknotify command is now included. It is a completely  
      generic client to the PyKotIcon cross-platform, networked,
      graphical, generic dialog box manager which is distributed
      separately.
      The pknotify command allows direct interaction with the end
      user at printing time : notifications, confirmations, and freely
      fillable forms can be used. It is also possible to authenticate
      a remote end user with a password on the print server through PAM.
      This finally allows people who offer anonymous logins on printing
      clients to still do per user print accounting and quota enforcement.
      
      IMPORTANT : binary packages for PyKotIcon will be available in
      the coming weeks, but ONLY for registered users.
      
    - The pkusers command line tool is now included. With it you an
      manage users and users groups. 
      
    - The edpykota command line tool was entirely rewritten. Half of
      its functionnalities are now only available through the pkusers
      command. BEWARE : Check your own shell scripts which used edpykota,
      some may not work anymore.
      
    - The pkinvoice command line tool is now included. With it you
      can generate configurable PDF invoices, based on optional
      date interval and user names, from the printing history.
      
    - The dumpykota command can now dump the entire database, without
      relying on each database's backup facilities.
    
    - All command line tools now accept to read their arguments
      from a file, with the -A | --arguments command line switch.
      This means that their number of arguments is now only limited
      by available memory, and not by the shell or kernel's limitations.
      
    - The parser used to precompute the job's size is now configurable
      to any script of your choice, but of course defaults to PyKota's
      internal parser.
      
    - Automated retry is now configurable in case of backend error,
      so third party tools like beh are not needed.
      
    - The zero is now configurable when checking account balances, this
      allows you to give free printing credits to your users.
      
    - The cupspykota backend now accepts to be cleanly interrupted  
      by the print administrator with a SIGINT.
      
    - Improved documentation.  
    
    - Usual bug fixes.
  
Many many thanks to all people who made this real, and especially 
to Matt Hyclak who did all the MySQL related work.

Future plans :

    - Coefficients based accounting : ink coverage, paper size, duplex/simplex,
      etc...
    
    - Possibility to refund jobs.
    
    - Hardware accounting for locally attached printers when possible.
    
    - Interfacing with copiers.
    
    - Restoring dumps made with dumpykota, to allow easy migration from
      a database backend to a different one (e.g. SQL to LDAP).
      
    - New website.
    
    - Better documentation.
    
    - Web based GUI.

Thank you for reading.

Any comment is welcome.

Jerome Alet