[cups] Newbie seeks help / FreeBSD 12.0 / Brother MFC-7860DW

[Brian Potkin]

On Tue 11 Jun 2019 at 11:13:04 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

> 
> In message <11062019083246.20b51faa95bb at desktop.copernicus.org.uk>, 
> Brian Potkin <claremont102 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >Debian Bug #635157 provides further background in Messages #25 and #45.
> >
> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=635157
> >
> >An excerpt from LP #701856:
> >
> > > Unfortunately, at Ubuntu we cannot fix this problem with a
> > > reasonable effort. There was already a volunteer some time ago
> > > who repackages Brother's driver package in an easy-to-install
> > > way, but he has given up after some time and Brother continues
> > > to issue support for new printers in the same awkward ways as
> > > before. The only one who can really solve the problem is Brother.
> 
> Bummer.
> 
> Thank you for the clarification and the additional information.
> 
> I should say however that I remain more than a little perplexed about
> all of this.
> 
> I seem to have my printer working nicely now, at least on Ubuntu (and
> somewhat/mostly on FreeBSD also).  And I achieved this marvelous feat
> without (as far as I am aware) installing any special (hacky?) Brother
> "drivers" or "wrappers", and just by supplying a/the proper .ppd file.

What does the *cupsFilter line in the PPD say?

> So, would it not be beneficial to the CUPS user community to -just-
> distribute a somewhat fuller set of Brother .ppd files, even while still
> eschewing all of Brother's additional (proprietary) junk?

Only if you were prepared to pickup all the fallout from users with
non-working systems. That's the point of the additional information
you ackowledged.

-- 
Brian.