[cups.development] Looking for implementation to USB kiosk printer

[Michael Sweet]

Jouni Tuovinen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to implement USB kiosk printer (Swecoin TTP 2030) to our 
> system (written in Java and C). I have faced problems with status 
> queries because the driver what I got from Swecoin doesn't support 
> status monitoring, below release notes from the driver:
>    "There is no status monitoring support in this driver. CUPS v1.2, 
> released earlier in 2006, promised support for backchannel data which 
> would enable     status monitoring. However, we discovered that it did 
> not work. This bug has been reported to the CUPS developers and will be 
> fixed later. Swecoin's     driver will include status monitoring support 
> when CUPS releases a version with working backchannel support."

I'm not aware of any bug reports on this, but I *am* aware that
many USB printers do not support back-channel data via the Linux
USB printer driver.  That situation may improve with the newer
libusb-based USB backend, but ultimately we are limited by the OS
and device support...

> Is this problem already solved or under process? Is there easy way 
> implemented status query by self to cups driver?
> 
> What would be the best solution for API between our systemn (Java or C) 
> and CUPS? Implement functions with C or use Java's own printing methods? 
> What is you proposals?

You're best off using IPP Get-Printer-Attributes requests to get the
printer-state-reasons attribute, which can be set by the driver to
provide you with status info.

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