[cups] Linux->(Linux, Windows) printer sharing with drivers on the server

[Ivan Shapovalov]

On 2016-05-19 at 18:31 +0100, Brian Potkin wrote:
> On Thu 19 May 2016 at 17:49:58 +0300, Ivan Shapovalov wrote:
> 
> > On 2016-05-19 at 16:01 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> > > 
> > > As far as I know clients can basically send whatever
> > > they want to a CUPS server and when the CUPS server
> > > does not know how to deal with a particular data type
> > > the CUPS server may reject or ignore such data
> > > or fall back to raw printing or whatever else
> > > depending on how the CUPS server is configured.
> > 
> > Correct; but there is a kind of auto-detection (guesswork) at
> > client
> > side. I want to convince that auto-detection to pick postscript
> > driver
> > by default.
> > 
> > IIUC, it is based at matching "make / model" against installed
> > drivers.
> > Probably it is possible to spoof advertised "make / model" so that
> > it
> > would match the generic postscript driver? Or maybe there is some
> > obscure tag in the dns-sd record which convey that information to
> > the
> > client?
> 
> In a previous mail you said
> 
>  > For Linux, I've tried to follow the official guide[1], using CUPS
> web
>  > interface and avahi/dns-sd on clients for printer discovery, and
> this
>  > turned into two problems:
> 
>  > 1. the client tries to install an HP-specific PPD for the
> discovered
>       printer (while we want a generic postscript driver);
> 
> Take the PPD on the server and alter the *Product line to
> 
>   (Generic Postscript Printer (en))
> 
> That gets you some of the way there. The web interface will put you
> in
> the Generic category of Model.

So that's how it is done.. It works with GNOME's system-config-printer, 
the setup is completely automated.

That's not the case for cups' own web interface (it still asks to pick
a printer from "generic" list, and does not infer paper size), but I
guess that this counts as "case solved". Thanks.

Finally -- it would be good to hear a word from cups developers:
- is it possible to override fields in the printer's dns-sd TXT record
  (on the server side)?
- what is the algorithm of inferring printer driver and default options
  from the dns-sd TXT record (on the client side)?
- why doesn't printer sharing Just Work in common configurations? :-)

-- 
Ivan Shapovalov / intelfx /