[cups.general] Can CUPS pass through the printer status somehow

[Michael Sweet]

Ambrose Li wrote:
> On 13/12/06, Michael Sweet <mike at easysw.com> wrote:
>> OK, it is possible that the printer has recieved all data and the
>> JetDirect card has been told that all pages have been processed by
>> the printer (but might not yet be totally printed...)
> 
> Maybe this is a "feature" request, but I wonder if CUPS can somehow
> pass through the remote printer's status. This must be doable, at least
> for some backends, because all lpr-based systems do such a thing.

No, just Berkeley LPD and LPRng, and that is because they don't do
local queuing for remote printers.

The LPD backend waits for a final status byte from the remote end
(required but not always implemented), and IPP polls until the
printer reports the job is completed.

However, if the network card and printer engine are not linked up,
these interfaces (like the socket interface) can report the job as
completed when it has just been completely transferred to the print
engine...

> ...
> Since CUPS is supposed to be better than LPR, not being able to ask
> the network printer for its queue will always feel like a bug (irrespective
> of whether it is officially a bug or not).

CUPS does the best it can - all of the network backends wait (by
default) until the remote end reports the job as completed.  If the
remote end doesn't report the correct status, there is nothing CUPS
can do to improve the situation...

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com