[cups.general] [Fwd: [Printing-user-general] Why has nothing changed?]

Komal Shah countofdracula at gmail.com
Sat Jul 29 11:34:39 PDT 2006


What you think people?

Komal

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Printing-user-general] Why has nothing changed?
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:31:05 +0000 (UTC)
From: nobody at example.com (Roger Morgan)
Organisation: http://www.linuxprinting.org/
To: printing-user-general at lists.freestandards.org
Newsgroups: linuxprinting.general

Two years ago, Eric Raymond posted his experiences with CUPS:
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html
in which he points out, with specific examples, that CUPS is a nightmare
to configure.

Today, in 2006, it is obvious to anyone who looks at the forums that CUPS is
*still* a nightmare to configure. Practically no progress has been made in 2
years.

What needs to change is not just the unusable documentation and 
misleading GUI.
What needs to change is some attitudes.

Most people who try to configure CUPS eventually come to Kurt Pfeifle's 
page on
CUPS Troubleshooting:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/kpfeifle/LinuxKongress2002/Tutorial/VII.cups-help/
VII.cups-help.html

Almost everything on this page is WRONG. I don't mean technically wrong; 
I mean
that any piece of software that requires this advice, needs to be junked and
rewritten. Examples:

Example 1:
"Did you make sure you checked the CUPS man pages ? The most important 
ones are
those for lpadmin, lpr, lp, lpc, lpq, lpstat, cupsd.conf, lprm . At the 
end of
most man pages you might be pointed to other man pages. Go read them too."

My response:
You mean I need to read an unspecified number of 'man' documents but at 
least
*eight*, IN ADDITION to the CUPS manual, just to configure a printer? 
GET OUT!!

Example 2:
"What was the exact command you gave to install it? Example: lpadmin -p
1st-printer -v socket://10.160.16.102 -L "Next to my desk" (Won't work: you
used a dash in the printer name and it doesn't start with a character, 
which at
present is "illegal" with CUPS; your socket device URL will most likely not
work if you don't give a Port number; you forgot the "-E" parameter..."

My response:
The response is meaningless as written, which suggests that nobody has 
read it
seriously in a couple of years. Yes, I know we all make typos, this post
probably has a few. But mistakes in troubleshooting advice which make 
the piece
of advice incomprehensible should be weeded out.

Example 3:
"Switch on the "debug" mode in the LogLevel directive for your CUPS daemon.
Edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf (....) Watch what is written to your CUPS 
error log"

My response:
Debug mode and a logfile are debugging tools for the developers. No user 
should
ever need to go near either of them. The CUPS software should be able to 
figure
out whether or not bits are getting as far as the printer. And it should be
able to tell the user which piece of the chain is missing (if that's what's
wrong).

Time to fork the CUPS project?





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