[cups] PPD API: Status, future and alternatives to handle printer-specific options

[Michael Weghorn]

Thank you about that hint about PJL, James.

In order to set those options, one would then probably need PPD files
that know what PJL commands to insert for the different options as
"stephanwib" wrote today in one of the GitHub issues [1]:

> The best is to use IPP (see CUPS IPP Everywhere support). If a
> printer doesn´t support that, you probably can control it using PJL
> commands. I don´t know vendors who offer PPDs that produce PDF+PJL,
> but you might have a look at some experimental ones from the
> cups-filters project here:
> 
> https://github.com/Distrotech/cups-filters/tree/distrotech-cups-filters/ppd

I remember to have looked at this a while ago and back then did not find
much documentation on the vendor's website about how to set options
using PJL (as you wrote, documentation seems to be very sparse...).

On 2017-02-09 00:18, James Cloos wrote:
> The trick would be to determine how the manufacturer's pcl, pxl or xps
> drivers submit print jobs with those options, and duplicate that, but
> end the pjl with @PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PDF.

Do you have an idea how that would be done? Are the respective Windows
drivers for PCL and XPS using PJL to set options? Would using Wireshark
or some other tool be a solution to check what is transmitted over the
network be a solution or are there other ways?

(I am not sure that using PJL by doing "reverse-engineering" and
creating our own PPD files is actually what we want do do, but it might
at least be sth to have a look at and consider until we can hopefully
make a switch to IPP-only transmission of options for PDF files.)


    Michael


[1] https://github.com/apple/cups/issues/4964#issuecomment-278599237


On 2017-02-09 00:18, James Cloos wrote:
> Many (most?  all?) of the "ps-only" ppd options can be sent to the
> printer with a pdf file if the pdf is encapsulated in pjl.
> 
> Documentation for doing that is likely to be exceptionally sparse.
> 
> The trick would be to determine how the manufacturer's pcl, pxl or xps
> drivers submit print jobs with those options, and duplicate that, but
> end the pjl with @PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PDF.
> 
> -JimC
>