[cups.general] Secure print?

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Jun 13 09:58 franz.pfoertsch.brose wrote (excerpt):
> But what are we doing in the meantime.

I assume those who have a PostScript printer with an
insufficient PPD file from the manufacturer should
have a contact to the manufacturer or dealer to report
defects or deficiencies.

In Germany you can at least reduce the price in case of a
deficiency which is not fixed within a reasonable time.
Of course it is practically impossible to reduce the price
for something which you already paid but from the legal
point of view you have the right to get some money back
up to undo the whole purchase. In Germany an important
point is whether or not a particular feature is a so called
"zugesicherte Eigenschaft" ("warranted characteristics" or
"guaranteed quality" or "express and implied representations").

In your case at least the "mailbox print" functionality
is plain simple traditional JCL stuff so that this must work
regardless of the operating system. In contrast the "secure print"
functionality might require additional software and then the
manufacturer might state that the "secure print" functionality
is only supported under the operating systems for which the
manufacturer provides the additional software.

As long as customers more or less silently accept
deficiencies, manufactures continue selling crap.
Perhaps the decision makers at most manufactures simply
do not know that their hardware has deficiencies when
used under Linux because their Windows driver works
and the Linux users do not complain at them.
If manufactures sell hardware with deficiencies
which cause annoyance for customers, the customers
should at least cause annoyance for the manufactures.
Manufactures won't ignore zillions of complaints ;-)

In addition to report deficiencies to the manufacturer
those who have such printers can do some kind of reverse
engineering and improve their PPD files on thier own.

I think it is really the best one can do to make such
information public available.

Regarding making information about printers public available, see

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/database/howtocontribute


> We are not in a perfect world and I have seen so much broken ppd-files.
> And I have no contact to somebody to push the fixes to printervendor.

I am afraid I do no longer have appropriate contacts to
printer manufacturers. I had a few contacts up to the time
when I made the SUSE RPM package "manufacturer-PPDs" in 2006
but meanwhile I do no longer have working time for this.
Furthermore free PPDs from PostScipt printer manufacturers
are also available from OpenPrinting.org.
Since openSUSE 11.4 there is the SUSE package "OpenPrintingPPDs"
in particular its sub-package "OpenPrintingPPDs-postscript" which
contains PPD files from OpenPrinting.org for PostScript printers.
Sooner or later I will drop the "manufacturer-PPDs" package.

In the end what I like to say is that OpenPrinting.org
is THE right place for printer related stuff.

I suggest to get in contact with OpenPrinting.org and I think
you can even upload your improved PPD files there (perhaps you
need to get some kind of login/registration/permission).


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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