[cups.general] Custom PPD errors on OS X 10.4 but not 10.5?

[Michael R Sweet]

Chris wrote:
> I made a custom ppd file to eliminate the ability to print in color. The generic way of doing this with a ppd file wasn't effective, I had to eliminate some menu options from the "Colorwise" menu. After eliminating the two options for printing in color, the colorwise menu doesn't even appear on OS X 10.5 computers, and all printing is in black and white (the desired behavior).
> 
> The trouble comes when trying this on a test powerbook still running 10.4.
> 
> I get an error 'the process "fierycupsfilter" stopped unexpectedly with status 2', and the item sits in the queue with status "printing". When attempting to print from Adobe Acrobat, it gives a similar (but not identical) error.
> 
> Eventually, the item clears from the print queue but a walk across campus to the printer reveals nothing has come from the printer. OS X 10.4 reports it as a completed job.
> 
> Some background info:
> The printer is a Lanier LD435c with an EFI Fiery E-5000 attached to it. Printing is done with the E-5000 ppd.
> 
> Any clue? Is this a CUPS issue, a Tiger issue, an E-5000 issue... I'll do some more poking around and if I find something useful I'll update.

It could very well be a vendor driver bug - many Mac OS X drivers
erroneously assume their PDEs will always be used and crash when they
don't see some special option/attribute in the job...

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Michael R Sweet                        Senior Printing System Engineer