Need encryption help & proposals for documentation

[David H]

Hello.

I don't know where else I should write this, so I try it here and hope that somebody responsible reads it.

I want to criticize, that in the CUPS documentation, section "Using Network Printers", the SMB protocol isn't mentioned at all and the issue of authentication to a printserver isn't covered.
It took me hours to find out, that I have to write scheme://username:password@server/printername (for example, scheme can be smb) to authenticate to a Windows printer (via samba) with a username and password, and I did NOT find this information in the CUPS documentation.

Now that I know how to authenticate to the Windows printer server via samba, the question arises how to authenticate in a _secure_ way as sometimes I have to authenticate over the internet.
Is encryption secure enough? How do I encrypt the data send to the Windows printerserver? After a few more hours of wearisome searching, I found that there are Encryption and DefaultEncryption directives in client.conf (which I don't have) and cupsd.conf. Which one do I have to use to encrypt the data? client.conf or cupsd.conf? Or none of both?

The CUPS documentation surely isn't very detailed and one easily can get confused and therefore not made for beginners and people who want to know how things work.

Hope, I made some constructive criticism for the documentation and would be thankful for some help.

greetings,