[cups.general] [Fwd: [Printing-user-general] Why has nothingchanged?]

[Michael Sweet]

Komal Shah wrote:
> 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.

Actually, it just points out that most Linux distributions clearly
haven't fixed their packaging of CUPS.  Right now most problems
involve either the driver (Foomatic, Gutenprint, HPLIP, etc.) or a
distro-induced problem like the changes Ubuntu made that break all
of the standard CUPS functionality...

We (the CUPS folks) addressed all of ESR's complaints that we
could, but most of his complaints were with the Linux distribution.
We don't have any control over the Linux distributions...

> ...
> My response:
> Debug mode and a logfile are debugging tools for the developers. No
 > user should ever need to go near either of them.

While I agree that ordinary users shouldn't have to look at the log
files, they are not just for developers.  Administrators and support
people also need the log files to diagnose configuration and
installation problems.

 > 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).

CUPS does this, when it can, and exposes this through the printer's
current state message (where you normally see "printing page 1...",
"printer off-line", etc.) or by automatically fixing things.

That sad, CUPS is just the core part of printing on Linux.  Many
third-party components are added to support the various printers
and applications you use.  CUPS can't know how to interpret every
error message, but it *can* log the error messages so that a human
(or another add-on program) can do the interpretation and tell the
user what is actually going wrong and fix it.

> Time to fork the CUPS project?

Um, I'd say many of the Linux distros have already effectively done
this - they are just maintaining their own version as the base CUPS
plus a bunch of patches.  And again, printing on Linux *isn't* just
CUPS, it is CUPS + ESP Ghostscript + HPLIP + Gutenprint + Foomatic +
many other pieces that have to be integrated together.

I'm not going to tell you that CUPS is perfect, but in this case I
believe your message is directed at the wrong people.  The place to
start is with your Linux distribution - if they aren't doing a good
job and won't listen to/support you, change distributions!

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