[cups.general] Passing extra information from environmenttobackend?

[Michael Sweet]

Johannes Meixner wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Oct 19 11:14 Michael R Sweet wrote (shortened):
>> Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
>>> What about a completely generic environment variable, which CUPS does
>>> not at all use, but just faithfully passes down its filtering chain
>>> through to the backend?
>> How is that any different?
> 
> An environment variable can be set different for each process,
> it keeps its value as long as the process runs, and it can be
> automatically inherited by child processes.

Well, duh.  The issue is that options/attributes set via environment
variable can interact with options passed by the app and/or on the
command-line.

> In contrast a "-o foo=bar" option setting must be either specified
> again and again for each job submission or it is stored for all
> processes of a user in a file in his home directory.

Again, the issue is more of how we'd separate options from the
environment from options provided by the user/app, options from the
lpoptions files, and options from the server.

We already have the LPDEST and PRINTER environment variables which
often cause problems because users either forget they set them or
have them set (often incorrectly) by the system admin or distro they
use.  I don't want to reproduce that experience with options, nor do
I want to add yet another complication to the lpoptions APIs which
already have to separate user, system, and server options...

-- 
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Michael R Sweet                        Senior Printing System Engineer