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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?
Does this mean OS X will finally support PCL? aka HP LaserJet? Without GS?
Please excuse my ignorance. Does this mean if I have a linux server hooked up to an old lazerjet (without postscript) that my osx mac will easily (or much more easily) be able to use it as a print server (for all applications - including graphical).
Any attempt by any company to introduce new technologies that are based on standards and that provide a means to work well with any and every platform should be considered a plus for the industry. We must get past the platform specific train of thought and focus on systems that make the platform you choose simply a personal choice and not one that will limit your ability to be productive.
IPP is the way of the future. It provides a mechanism to connect any and every printer in the world together with any delivery mechanism. The possibilities of providing a common printing mechanism are astounding. Imagine doing away with low quality fax machines and being able to send a secure and private document around the world directly to someone's desk. Imagine sending a birthday card to Grandma right to her living room. Imagine printing from a wireless device while walking down the street to a printer at a print shop ready to pick up!
Forget snail mail and faxing IPP is the only way to go!
1. install the old pre-10.1 LPRIOM.plugin
2. install ghostscript
3. edit lpr.plugin to use your printer's gs driver
4. use Netinfo to create your domain service printers
5. use PrintCenter to create your printers
6. print using any Mac OS X app to your remote Linux-hosted USB or parallel-port printer; this works over wired or wireless airport Ethernet
Apple is only licensing CUPS from the copyright holder (Easy Software Products) to get around the GNU restrictions, so a proprietary version can be distributed without source.
"The standard CUPS distribution will be provided with Apple's open source Darwin operating system, while an enhanced version of CUPS with Apple's Aqua user interface will be provided with MacOS X."
Like any other 'net resource the spammers & maladjusted will attempt to abuse IPP. Unsolicited Commercial Email, Mail Bombs, and Junk Faxes are problems today; Drive-By-Printings could be tomorrow.
Instead of coming home to 30 flyers advertising take-out places your printer would pump them out continuously along with guaranteed penis enhancements, herbal highs, the latest in puppy porn, and of course a thousand pages of solid black from the dork you belittled on /. last week. Or you'll end up having to write elaborate filters for your incoming queue (procqueue anyone?) previewing everything before allowing it to go through, blocking off known printer-jacking domains.
No, IPP is great inside a facility and between sites that cross-print a lot but I expect email will remain the standard way of distributing a document. Email is widely deployed, directories are already in place, it can be encrypted & authenticated, uses a store-and-forward architecture, doesn't require the output device be known or any drivers required. The recipient need only have an application capable of printing the document and there are any number of good formats running from the "business-standard" MS Word to Adobe Acrobat to HTML/XML pages on down to good old flat text - ASCII or Unicode.
Indeed while many print shops take jobs online none I'm aware of accept random ones without pre-arranged accounts. Then most of the time they specify the formats one can HTTP-upload to them or send via a custom print driver in their format (presumably some PostScript or HPGL variant with headers for job identification, output settings, and accounting.)
So while CUPS and IPP are great things and are definitely making the world more interoperable (Unix & varients, Win2k+, MacOS X, lots of newer printers & print servers) they're not going to revolutionize it any more then standard print queues, Windows Shares, MacOS Printer Sharing, Novell Distributed Print Services, iPrint, etc.
ps Anyone know of an IPP implementation in PostScript? Might be a great way to "upgrade" all of these older devices with a single loaded print job.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
You could try the alpha version of my own printing system which I've written in Perl after three attempts to get CUPS to work ended in failure. I use it to print across the network to my Epson S.P. 1290.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Well, they're certaintly not encouraging anyone to port their OSX apps to Linux or BSD. I wouldn't mind Quicktime player or iTunes or iPhoto or iDVD or Aqua or their Display PS drivers or Applescript on Linux, and this doesn't even touch on encouraging third parties to port their apps over. Granted, they've got the Darwin stuff and QT Streaming Server, but that doesn't help us all that much. Hell, all the Darwin people are just running XFree anyhow.
This brings up a fairly interesting point though. Why is it that we as a community don't encourage ports to Linux? When we lack an app, it's always a replacement we want. I just downloaded a game called "egoboo" for Linux, and it's a really nicely done 3d nethack type game. When I opened up the readme file though, it said it was for Direct3D! Someone has ported a great piece of work for the community. Why don't we encourage more people to write their programs using Qt and OpenGL and SDL so that we can make use of them too? Shareware/Freeware authors want a wide audience, and encouraging the use of cross-platform stuff could be a real boon to us all. Perhaps a motion to do this is what we need to start with? I mean, Apple sure as hell isn't going to encourage anyone to port stuff to Linux, we'll have to do it ourselves.
What do you guys think? I know classically, Linux versions of apps generally suck, like the Kazaa Linux crap for instance. But what about other programs? I'd love to see Triallian personally. Any thoughts?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."