Slashdot Mirror
Apple Licenses CUPS
bmeteor writes: "Short and very sweet: CUPS is licensed by Apple. A boon for both Apple and GNU." CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) is a system based on the Internet Printing Protocol for standardized printing on Unix systems. That's nice, but when can I print over the network to my Epson inkjet, like I can in Mac OS 9 with USB Printer Sharing?
I used it around '98 or '99, and it got the job done for me.
I hope Apple has success -- the PrintManager and the printing architecture in general is a significant weakness of OS X. Printing for me typically entails making a PS or a PDF and moving it to my NeXT for printing or FAXing. It's too much of a bother to deal with the OS X printing tools.
And I can't share my USB printer, which is just stupid. Neither by NetInfo or by SMB, or by LPR.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Setup is easy and the quality is on par with Windows' output.
If i'm not mistaken OS X can already access smb shares and it probably wouldn't be too hard to get something like xsmbrowser running on it. If you want to browse and access smb shares on OS 9 there is a product called Dave that makes them show up in the Chooser. Dave is commercial payware but it does work very well.
just do the steps listed in the hint at Mac OS X Hints.
Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
We're currently using it at my workplace to print to both HP and Lexmark printers. Our Solaris, Linux and NT 4.0 machines all print through it. The only limitation we have seen is that the PS that comes from Windows is not able to be counted correctly in the page_log (i.e. you print a 756 page document and it only shows up as one page). I believe there's a workaround for this that we're looking into, but otherwise it's a good solid platform that we rely on in production.
I just recently became aware of OMNI, a unix printing system by IBM based off Ghostscript. It seems very comprehensive, they list support for *610* printers.
What struck about this is that I thought CUPS was pretty well-agreed upon by the major players as a common unix (the CU in CUPS) standard. How does OMNI compare with CUPS? Or do they perhaps represent different levels of the whole printing system and do they compliment one another?
And why can he post stuff to the frontpage?
Pudge is Chris Nandor. Long-standing MacPerl person, and now working for OSDN by the looks of things. The story was posted to the Apple section first, and presumably made it to the front page from there.
-dair
It seems that the company that wrote cups has a interesting business model. It is licensing CUPS to non-GPL friendly companies (EG. Anything that is not a Linux distro.) , and that is how it plans to make money. Apple like most of the *BSD's, prefers to touch GPL software with a ten foot pole.
Well, as one of the companies involved in the deal, I can say that the whole purpose of this licensing arrangement is to satisfy the lawyers, and Apple has been working with us to make sure that the standard CUPS distribution 1) builds out of the box for OS X/Darwin, and 2) contains as much functionality as possible (e.g. USB support will appear in the near future, etc.)
The only thing that won't be part of the open-source CUPS is the Aqua interface and PDF RIP technology, both of which already have suitable open-source replacements in the Linux and *BSD worlds.
I print, therefore I am.