[cups] Handling of "Installable Options" in user applications

[Michael Sweet]

Michael,

> On Sep 4, 2015, at 6:17 AM, Michael Weghorn <m.weghorn at posteo.de> wrote:
> ...
> The reason why I looked at this is that incorrectly set values for the installable options cause a serious paper jam on a certain printer model we are using.

That is definitely a bug in the printer or its driver - there isn't much CUPS can do here if the underlying printer is broken.

> ...
> As far as I understand it, the specification itself actually leaves it up to the application (developers) to decide whether or not to display the installable options and to make them editable for the user. Do I understand this correctly?

Correct.

> Apart from the PPD specification itself: Are there any recommendations whether or not to display installable options in the printing dialog of "ordinary user applications"?

Generally speaking, we recommend that applications/toolkits *not* show installable options in the print dialog, and we provide API to determine whether a given option or choice is available (ppdInstallableConflict).

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Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair