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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?
Now all they need is something that will let you browse windows shares.
Free Mac Mini
The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.
Is it better now than it was then?
--NBVB
Remember, Free !== Quality
That's just for Apple stories
I belive that OSXS 2.0 has some kind of printer sharing already.
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.
Personally as a web designer, I'm sick to death of every man and his dog trying to make everything look like aqua... Must bring a smile to Steve's face though :)
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
More to the point, what were you going to say that made you hit the reply button?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
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!
just do the steps listed in the hint at Mac OS X Hints.
Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
This is definitely great news. I think this will be a big positive, especially for Apple in higher education and big biz.
I agree, but for different reasons. Now that CUPS will have an installed base as large as Apple's, printer vendors will start supporting it. It should also encourage other Unix vendors to start supporting it as their default printing mechanism. Maybe we'll finally see the last of lpsched and lpd?
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?
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
Right on! Slashdot does need a redesign. For christ's sake, it's one of the god damn ugliest things I've ever seen. Kuro5hin seems to be right on target, as well as many of the other "geek news sites". Mrf. Come on /.!
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
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
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."
More to the point, what were you going to say that made you hit the reply button?
;)
Good question... like my dad used to say when I would forget what I was going to do/say, "if it's important you'd remember it". Then one day when he asked my why I didn't do something he asked, I said I forgot and then added "but if it was important I would have remembered"... wrong reply!
I was probably just going to troll for Karma
The first time I read over that title I saw "Apple Licesnses CPUs". My apartment filled with a resounding "huh?" :)
Is the OS X Server an X server? ;-)
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
It is my understanding that currently the OSX printing subsystem is based on Carbon and the OS9 printing system... does this mean that future versions of the printing system will move over to the Unix side of the fence? Will they wrap CUPS with Cocoa? How is this going to work, exactly?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I have thought that you could set up a printer (even a USB printer) to be shared using NetInfo. Granted, this is the supposition of one who has never done it (but never needed to). I think it might explain how in here : ftp://mAnuals.info.apple.comApple_Support_Area/Man uals/software/UnderstandingUsingNetInfo.PDF
I apologize if I am wrong and get people's hopes up. If I am wrong, just look at this as a fascinating document on how NetInfo works.
The Finite
Boom Shanka
I was probably just going to troll for Karma ;)
Looks like you failed! Sorry...
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Yowzer!
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.
Looks like you failed! Sorry...
/. was unusually pretty :)
Yeah, I was distracted by the fact that
I've got a couple of these Lantronix MPS servers and they work great. Support for LPD, AppleTalk, and LanManager. All your network printing needs in one tiny little device.
And no, I don't work for them, I'm just a very happy customer.
P.S. I just noticed on my preview page the aqua-colored 3d-ish looking gradient bars instead of normal slashdot green. I don't like them.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
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.
Yeah, buit if they stop that they're just going to go back to blurring layers of text on everything.
...and using an HP ethernet printer, everytime I want to print to the darn thing, I need to reset the printer (known HP driver bug that has lasted for about 3 months now.)
I had a way more positive experience on OS 9 with printer discovery and sharing. AppleTalk on OS X is just slow and broken.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
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"
Funding Free Software development by selling non-Free licenses is a perfectly reasonable and good action; the revenues from this, remember, will in large part go to pay the folks who write the Free version.
Mac OS X printing is not based on OS9 printing at all.
Mac OS X native printing uses PDF as the spool file format and uses completely different drivers than OS9 - this is why many older printers are supported in Classic, but not native Mac OS X.
Yes. CUPS uses GS for the driver.
It doesn't have to be a trendy redesign or anything with lots of images. It could have one image, for all I care. It's not that I've grown tired of it, either - I've just hated this design since I first saw it. If they had a good design, I wouldn't be crying for a new design every 6 months.
.. stuffy and clogged up to me.
Example: Kuro5hin (note that I'm not a hardcore Kuro5hin supporter, I just think that it has a quality content related design) has a very, very nice design that loads very quickly. Everything is nice and spaced out, it just feels right. Slashdot feels kind of
Of course, this will stay the same forever. Oh well.
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
Why on earth would you want to use Appletalk at all? Add the printer by entering the IP address for goodness sakes. And if the HP drivers make your job choke try using the generic drivers.
Best of luck.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
versiontracker, learn it, love it.
Just a thought; spam, fax spam and the like wouldn't be so prevalent if nobody ever responded to them.
I don't know who is. Maybe someone's Grandma really is buying all this viagra, drug alternatives, long distance, cellular services, satellite dishes, descramblers, life insurance, gambling, banned porn and getting killer toner deals with free vacation giveaways while making $1500-20,000 a week from home on their free stock tips.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Apple has been in the practice of seeking out or attempting to create standards to for years - it's nice to see them embracing pre-existing standards. The integration of BSD and MacOS is a great thing for both communities, and I hope to see more announcements like this in the future!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
at HP abandoned standard OS printing systems long ago for their own print spooler, print monitor, etc? The sad part is they are unneeded (Windows will print without them - Macs sadly still use 'em). I was disappointed when Apple switched to HP printers and didn't manage to talk HP out of their horrendous drivers.
But I digress.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
that the very best benifit from all of this is that OEM's (the big ones who never think about us poor linux guys) will develop _good_ drivers for CUPS... which will be just as useful for linux as they are for OS X. (if my understanding of the drivers is correct)
Meaning that driver support will skyrocket for linux, which, to many, is the only thing "holding linux back." (I know a few buddies who would have switched 100% to linux if they could get their printers to work)
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
The most disappointing thing to me about OS X has been the missing features that were present in OS 9. The software base station feature for AirPort and USB Printer sharing have hit me the hardest. I decided to shell out the bucks for the flying-saucer base station, as it's more stable anyway, but I'm still having to use file sharing to send documents from other rooms to the print computer and print physically from there. I know there are UNIX-terminal fixes for these things, but I still think Apple has dropped the bomb if they don't reimplement some of these features within a few updates.
yeah, it's great for everyone who's responsible. obviously, though, NOT everyone is. Some one could send someone a couple of pages of full-page pr0n, and what do you know, your ink cartridge is gone. it costs 12 to 20 cents, sometimes more, to print a full-color page. and 4 to 12 cents for a text-y one. Printing is expensive. Or, write a little loop, send War and Peace to somebody a couple times... there'd really have to be some security around this, some kind of encryption / sender validation, around this. just hope m$soft doesn't get into this (=
on the other hand, m$soft could really facilitate the spread of this tech. (hehe, would it still be a good thing after they got done with it?)
&&stuff;
Now that Apple have licensed CUPS, this can only benefit Linux / BSD and other *nixes that use CUPS.
Hopefully, the likes of HP, Epson, once they see that CUPS is main stream (ie, OSX), they will write drivers for it. Then, hopefully, you'll be able to use the same drivers for whatever OS you are using with CUPS.
Even if the drivers aren't opensource, it would still be a benefit to all CUPS users. The current cups drivers for Epson printers aren't as good as the windows versions...
I've printed using cups over the network without problems. The machine with the printer had both linux and windows on it and it worked in both cases (one used smb, the other ipp). It was an Epson 740.
Unix people may be interested in this - Apple has been doing lots encourage open source ports to Mac OS X. They've sent things, like the new open source port contest out to there registered developers. Also, they have a new site dedicated to their open source projects (such as Darwin) and other ports to Mac OS X.
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."
Were you dropped as a child? Repeatedly? Oxygen deprivation? Poor nutrition? What? GIVE so we can prevent other dumbasses like you!
I've got a mac.com email address 'cause it's a decent, free, stable one that offers IMAP & SMTP. If you think folks that have them are Apple employees you REALLY neeed to get up to speed.
Second I'm WELL familier with IPP, also with PostScript, apparently you're not. PostScript is a pretty robust language (yes it's Turing Complete) and it's entirely possible to run applications written in it on a printer. Yes, you heard me; not just graphics but actual compute-and-do-something applications.
In this case I'm wondering if someone has done an IPP protocol stack in PS. Is it doable? Entirely. Most PS hosts (ie network printers) already have a TCP/IP stack, PS has no trouble tying into it and this it's clearly something that would be very popular.
Now, this may well ALL be news to you but folks raised properly generally have a bit more manners when publically flaunting their cluelessnes.
You may crawl back down that dank, apparently very deep and very dark AC hole you came from and not come back until you're willing to put a name to your own worthless words AND have picked up a bit of the information you so urgently push (and disparage) on others.
Over-&-Out
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.
The point of my post was to point out that Apple does not have a heart of gold in doing what they do. They won't make these ports of Aqua and DPDF simply because they don't give a shit about this community beyond the point that it helps them. Not that this is unexpected, but it certaintly isn't something to hold up and glorify.
And I really don't know how you can accuse a community that gives away an entire operating system of greed. Apple got a hell of a lot from the open/free community including glib, gcc, perl, apache, and an entire UNIX subsytem that they emblazon rather large in their feature list.
No, they're not necessarily obligated to give anything back, and I applaud what they did with Darwin, but let's be frank about it. What they gave back with Darwin was no better than a Linux implementation, and in many ways it's worse. They didn't give any piece away that would have really helped anyone else. Remember, any changes and improvements that you make in Darwin get rolled back in to OSX to help it out. So you do wind up helping OSX users and yourself in the process, but Apple is certaintly not doing anyone any favors with this move. There's no charity involved, and they don't deserve heaps of praise.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
You know... I would kill for a port of Appleworks to Linux. I cut my teeth on Appleworks (nee Clarisworks), and didn't switch to Office until I got a PC many years down the line. And at that point I still wanted a copy of Appleworks. If they can't sell Appleworks on Windows, perhaps for Linux? One thing that I've never seen is a Works package for Linux, which is probably a function of the fact that everyone thinks of MS's stinking pile of shit works program when they think of Works. Appleworks is such an amazing program. Do you think this kind of port would constitute a danger to Apple from MS? It is a great program that deserves more attention.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This has advantages of device independence... applications only need to know how to send ASCII or postscript.. so you don't need to install device drivers on all the client machines - the administrator can move queues/devices around without having to reconfigure/inform any clients.
This has disadvantages in the the client (application) knows nothing about the particular features of the printer - resolution, paper size, the fact that letter head is in tray 1, plain in tray 2 and so on.
CUPS (IPP) is a solution to this problem. It provides information about the printer associated with a queue to the client. This is done in a standard way so that the client only has to understand cups to be able to send output (ideally postscript, but text also) to CUPS. Again, the drivers are installed on the machine that hosts the device - which takes care of either converting the text/postscript to an appropriate format (for example, to print to your epson ink jet).
So with CUPS you have a great deal of control over you print out while retaining a lot of the advantages of the UNIX model (no need to install printer drivers all over the place).
And you would want to run an Apple II forever because.....??
Not a troll just curious! I never did get why people collect old 8 bit machines, my room is full of 486/low pentiums but they are still damn useful as mail servers/fire walls etc.. perhaps I shouldnt have sold my speccy for a PC when I was a kid and then I might understand.
In my case, it's just nostalgia. I have all the 8-bit machines I couldn't afford when I was a kid now, along with the gaggle of low end Pentiums and 486s as you describe. My router/firewall box is a (shudder) Packard Bell P-150 that I saved from the dumpster.
hawk
Hmmm...looks like our journalist-to-be has friends with moderation points...
Now this is what I like - people without ethics and who don't have the balls to weigh in on their own. Mod a guy down, why don'tcha, for speaking his mind and staring the parent down for what it is: silly, immature and just plain sad...
Well, the CUPS FAQ and guidelines for submission are very clear that the copyright of contributions to the CUPS baseline must be assigned to ESP so we can license the code to others.
As for the "monetary exchange", there is not a single Linux distributor that has paid money to us, even for support, yet they (and all Linux users) get to use CUPS for free as a result.
Also, before you criticize us, you might want to look at our web sites - we provide most of our software under GNU licenses, and we regularly contribute to other open source projects like SAMBA, GIMP-print, FLTK, GNOME, etc.
I print, therefore I am.
Actually, most recent Linux distros are coming with CUPS; some make it the default, some offer it as a choice.
RH 8.0 is also coming with CUPS...
I print, therefore I am.