[cups] Autoselect correct PPD on Mac OS X?

[Michael Sweet]

Julian,

> On Jun 27, 2016, at 9:59 AM, Julian Daniel <jdaniel at smcdsb.on.ca> wrote:
> ...
> For some reason, El Crapitan (10.11) chooses the correct driver regardless
> - I guess newer versions of CUPS client must revert to other information
> sources besides SNMP printer info. I think Mac OS X 10.5 and lower also
> worked correctly.

SNMP information is rarely used to choose a printer driver.

The preferred "driver" on OS X is (hopefully not a surprise) AirPrint.

If the printer does not support AirPrint (rare these days), we use the make, model, and product information that is published in the Bonjour TXT record or USB printer descriptor to match against a PPD (installed or available via Software Update).

For shared printers, we use the server's PPD with the printer-specific filters replaced with "null" filters for the standard file formats (so we let the server run the drivers).  If for some reason we cannot connect to the server within 30 seconds, the queue is not created.

> Is there anything that can be done on the server side to force the client
> to choose/use/download the PPD from the server rather than trying to get it
> from the printer and defaulting to generic?

You can't force it but you have to go out of your way, i.e., add the print queue manually, to add a shared printer without the server's PPD.

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Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer