Associate a backend with a printer?

[Aaron Sher]

> Aaron,
>
> On May 8, 2012, at 12:52 PM, Aaron Sher <asher at vanteon.com> wrote:
> > 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?
>
> Which backends are showing the delay?
>
> What versions of CUPS/OS X?

It seems to be the "socket" backend, on CUPS 1.4.7/Mac OS X 10.6.8, but that's just my test platform. The delays appear to be hard-coded in the backend; naturally, the standard backends need to be conservative in their timing, but we'd like to be able to tune the timing for our particular printer. I don't think it has to do with the SNMP request, but I'll experiment with that to be sure.

> > If we did write a custom backend, how would we get the thing to show up in the add printer UI?
>
> It will show up in the default "browser" pane of Add Printer.  Depending on the version of OS X being used, this will happen quickly (10.7 and later) or after a delay of several seconds (10.6 and earlier).

I had actually tried this before in a sort of half-assed way, but just now I successfully created a modified version of "socket" that shows a printer in the dialog, so that's progress.

So, to sum up, we can write a custom backend, but:

1. Our installer has to put it in /usr/libexec/cups/backend (or at least a symlink to it)
2. Our printer is going to show up in the Default panel under Bonjour, and that one will appear several seconds earlier than the "right" one on 10.6 and below, so there's a user education process to convince people not to pick that one.

Is that about right?

Much appreciated,
    Aaron