[cups.general] How to alias existing CUPSprinterstogetadditionalpaper tray capability?

[Michael Sweet]

Michael Talbot-Wilson wrote:
> ...
>>>> What is unusual is that dvips makes assumptions about the printer
>>>> name, like it can be used as a filename (lpr even allows spaces in
>>>> alias names!)
> 
> Dvips has been around a long time, it's how one prints under Linux, and

Um, it is how a small minority of users print, and even then it is
only used for creating a print file, not for the actual printing
(unless you are redirecting to the parallel/serial port to print
without a spooler, but that would still put you in the minority)

> CUPS is for printing.  Despite your apparent disdain for what Rokicki
> or whoever did in dvips you could have been tolerant enough or simple
> enough to ensure that instances would interoperate with it.

We can't design around assumptions made by other independent developers.

 > ...
>> "/" is the only character that is commonly used to indicate a
>> hierarchy in UNIX.  ":" is a close second and is used by several
> 
> You beg the question by insisting on seeing it as hierarchy.  That is
> a choice.  Get this: a printer instance is not a hierarchy.

Um, yes it is.  "printername/instance" is based on "printername", so
that implies derivation or hierarchy.

> ...
> Instances are in principle a nice idea.  But your unalterable decision
> makes them unusable for probably the large majority of Linux users who
> are not using something like Open Office to print, those who use what
> comes in the Linux distribution, or who want better documents than
> anything but TeX can produce.

Tell you what - we'll put up a survey on the CUPS site asking users
what applications they use for producing their documents.  I'm
suspecting that TeX will *not* be the #1 application...

Anyways, instances using slashes are here to stay.  Nobody is forcing
you to use them, and the workaround for the but in dvips is rather
simple.  You could even file a bug report against dvips (IIRC, there
are still some DSC conformance issues with the output as well...)

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