[cups.development] Define the printer list

[Francis Giraldeau]

Michael R Sweet a écrit :
> Francis Giraldeau wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> We face an issue with the printer list displayed to the user in large
>> environment. We need the ability to display only some of the printers,
>> since other printers are not relevant.
>>
>> We did that by changing libcups cupsGetDests to make it return only
>> selected printers, based on a configuration parameter. That way, all
>> cups aware applications are getting the same printer list, and no
>> changes on server side are necessary.
>>
>> The patch is based on glib, so I guess it has to be reimplemented to
>> avoid adding a new dependency to libcups, and probably needs major
>> rework, but the idea is there.
>>
>> https://svn.revolutionlinux.com/MILLE/XTERM/branches/ltsp-cluster/cups-client-filter/libhideprinters/libhideprinters.c
>>
>> We are looking for a permanent solution for this problem. Comments welcome.
>>     
>
> OK, don't expect to see a solution like this in CUPS.  What you might
> see is the ability to make use of the location and type filters, and
> possibly some host/printer filtering in the client.conf file.
>
> The way this issue has been "solved" on Mac OS X is to use a per-user
> plist (XML) file to track "favorite" remote printers, such that users
> can choose one or more remote printers to show in the print dialog in
> addition to the local queues.  In 10.4, a "Shared Printers" submenu was
> used to pick remote printers, which then were promoted to the top-level
> printer chooser menu.  In 10.5, the user picks the printers from the
> Add Printer window instead.
>   

Thanks for the feedback. We agree that this feature should be on the
client side, to display a printer list corresponding to user preference.
It allows two users of the same cups server to get printer list as they
want.

It seems that Mac OS X applications are using a common, higher level
framework for printing than under Linux, where printing panels are
linked directly to libcups. As you may know, within an open source
desktop, each application may use a different dialog for printing. It's
hard to modify each printing dialog to make then show a custom printer
list. (It could, but then I should ask to freedesktop guys.) Since
(mostly) all panels are all linked to libcups, in my point of view, it
make sens to add the ability to use a custom printer list to libcups.
And it's not mandatory that Mac OS X is using this feature if it's not
relevant to that platform.

And for the software itself, it's more a proof of concept, but with a
new spec, I could make it production ready, even with a little gui to
let the user configure it's printer list.

I will start a thread on that topic on freedesktop to get some feedback
on that.

Cheer,

Francis Giraldeau

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