Associate a backend with a printer?

Aaron Sher asher at vanteon.com
Tue May 8 12:52:43 PDT 2012


> I had asked what you needed to do that the standard backends didn't do in a prior response - is there something preventing you from using the standard backends?

Sorry, I didn't see the prior response - I wasn't looking for replies on the development board, since I shouldn't have posted my original message there in the first place.

The issue that we have with the standard backends is that they're conservative with their timing. Our printer is very fast, and we'd like to reduce the job-to-job delay imposed by the standard backends, but I don't think there's any way of doing that without writing a custom backend?

> Nothing prevents you from writing the custom backend, and even making it possible to discover. The limitation is that the printer won't show up with your custom backend in the "nearby printers" list.

Unfortunately, this means that 99.9% of users will just click the thing in the "nearby printers" list (or, for that matter, in the Default panel after they click "Other Printer"), and so virtually nobody will be using our custom backend, and we'll get complaints that the printer is slow.

If we did write a custom backend, how would we get the thing to show up in the add printer UI? I was assuming it would be under More Printers..., but the only one that I see at the moment is the HP IP Printing panel, which one of my coworkers wrote as a PBM many years ago. Presumably, to add something to that list, you'd need to implement a UI and not just a backend?

Thanks,
   Aaron




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