Windows driver

[Niconux]

Hi there,

I've recently discovered that available PPD options displayed by Windows driver are not all there.

I mean, in the PPD files, there are options depending of the choice you do on others, themselves depending of others and so on.

Let's say that this constitute a N level panels of options. And the Windows Driver is only able to create the UI interface and manage the first level.

For example:
I have printers where the PPD says then can accept a PIN code.
so, in the Windows driver I have a drop down list reflecting this "PIN code: Yes/No".
But when I chose yes, the UI of the driver is supposed to allow the user to effectively enter several other options like his user name and the PIN code for instance.
Unfortunately this is not the case, because the Windows driver seems to be limited, for now, to the display and management of the first level (parent level, let's say) of PPD options.

More and more PPDs have built-in several levels of group of options, depending of others. That's becoming hard to correctly define printer's options because of this limitation.

And taking a look a the Windows driver source code, it seems that several methods return a NOT_IMPLEMENTED value, which tend to confirm to me that the driver can handle only the first level of options available in the PPD.

So my questions are, is there a work in progress around the Windows driver to propose a better implementation of the PPD specifications, which are designed, in fact, to drive the driver itself in the way it will handle and create the User Interface for printer options ? Can we have an idea when the Windows driver will allow user input fields according what the PPDs allow (for example, I've a drop-down list for watermarks where I can select a custom one: but there is no input field where the user can register his custom watermark...) ?

The options I'm speaking about here and we don't have in the UI of the driver compared to what would be possible in the PPDs, are typically options needed by a European institution managing more than 300 printers via CUPS/postscript Windows driver/SAMBA servers... like us...

Thanks for your help and answers.

Best regards,
Nicolas