[cups] Re: Printing to native XPS printers using CUPS

[pipitas]

till. ... .com wrote on Tue Nov 3 13:11:17 PST 2015:

> The XPS format is from the times of Windows Vista and did not get really
> popular. Is it really widely used nowadays? Does Windows actually use it
> as device-independent format for network printing (as we use PDF
> currently)?

Windows uses it internally as its own spooling format for all WPF-based
applications. Legacy applications still have to use GDI/EMF for initial
spooling, but then then this GDI/EMF-output is captured by the Windows
print subsystem and force-converted by the MXDC filter to XPS.

Today, all the Windows print driver developers are forced to take XPS
as input for their own filters. So even if XPS never was that type of
"success" that MS envisaged, it will not be going away. BTW, the most
recent version is now called OXPS ("Open").

Also, the IPP and IPP Everywhere specificat documents mention it as
one of the supported formats...

> Are there still many printers on the market which support
> only XPS as known PDL (no PDF, PS, PCL in addition)?

I do not think they will die very fast. I'd guess XPS-printers do print more
pages per day than printers for which, say Gutenprint-only drivers exist.

> Which manufacturers
> and models?
Konica-Minolta has quite a few in the league of office printers for companies.

> I want to know whether it is worthwhile to create a rastertoxps print
> filter to support native XPS printers or whether the time of XPS is
> already over.

Also, Evince and Okular can display XPS...

Overall, I think if there was a well-working XPS-to-anything print system
capable of running on Linux, this would increase the chance for competing
with Windows-based print servers serving Windows clients in certain
environments, and it would probably also be beneficial for speed and
overall performance of such an environment (because it could avoid
required steps on the client side).