"Version" ppdc directive and the *NickName keyword

[Michael Sweet]

On Jan 4, 2010, at 8:36 PM, Kennedy, Smith (Macintosh Software - IPG MCT) wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I recently noticed something about the "Version" ppdc directive, which I had overlooked: in addition to being used for the *FileVersion keyword, the value is also appended to the *NickName keyword.  So if I have:
> 
> Version 1.2
> 
> in my .drv file, running ppdc I end up with:
> 
> *FileVersion: "1.2"
> *NickName: "HP LaserJet P2035n, 1.2"
> 
> This has the undesirable side effect of revealing the driver version in the "Add Printer" dialog on Mac OS X, as well as in the "Kind" field in the "Print & Fax" System Preferences panel when a queue using that PPD is selected.  I was wondering as to the rationale for ppdc to be generating the *NickName keyword with the version in it?  What value does this provide users?  Is this valuable on other platforms supported by CUPS?  The Adobe PPD spec doesn't provide much meaningful help in its description of the *NickName keyword.
> 
> I tried replacing the "Version" directive with:
> 
> Attribute "FileVersion" "" "1.2"
> 
> but ppdc fails for an unknown reason when I tried this experiment, so there seems to be no way to work around this.


Use:

   Version 1.2
   Attribute "NickName" "" "HP LaserJet P2035n"

___________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer