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Apple Releases CUPS 2.0
kthreadd writes: 15 years after the release of CUPS 1.0, Apple has now released version 2.0 of the printing system for GNU/Linux and other Unix-style operating systems. One of the major new features in 2.0 is that the test program for ippserver now passes the IPP Everywhere self-certification tests. Also, they've made an interesting blog post looking at the past and future of printing. Since the first major release in 1999, printing has become much more personal. Printer drivers are going away, and mobile usage is now the norm."
Dafuq with dropping OpenSSL support in favor of GnuTLS only?? Does somebody think GnuTLS never had a single vulnerability?
Why you'd need a web server for printing has always riddled me.
All the links are to blogs and release-notes, but none of them (nor anywhere obvious on cups.org itself) actually has a download or instructions where to get it. New release sounds nice. Not usable if we can't get it, but "sounds nice", so at least it has that going for it.
Printer drivers are going away
It's about time
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I haven't turned on my printer in 5 years.
The future of printing is that tablets will make it obsolete,
If anything, printing has not become more personal, not mobile. All I see used in practice these days are huge office high performance machines, you know, the ones that can spew 100 pages per minutes, with documents being sent to them from real computers.
The mobile devices (smartphones and especially tablets) made electronic documents viable and portable, so nobody prints things from their phones or tablets - they already have a presentation of the document, a paper copy is not needed. Definitely there is no smartphone to printer workflow at homes.
You must be very young.
http://i.imgur.com/4oHA0RU.png
(I know, it probably wasn't there 15 minutes ago.)
Apple is not the developer of CUPS. Apple bought CUPS back in 2007 and hired its main developer.
CUPS is an example of the sort of hairy mess that open-source developers don't like to deal with, like OpenSSL. It was the inspiration for Eric Raymond (the main guy of the Open Source movement) to scold the OSS community back in 2004. I think Eric Raymond's ire is misplaced; CUPS was uniquely horrible back then. But printing in Unix has always been bad, and CUPS made it much better than before, so everybody standardized on it.
Have a nice time.
No. It was a clusterfuck before they took over.
It was previously a deranged chaotic community project.
So whose printer have you been using?
From TFA and linkage... Comments are owned by the poster. All other material is Copyright © 2007-2014 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. CUPS, the CUPS logo, and OS X are trademarks of Apple Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Please report site problems to 'webmaster@cups.org'.
Printer drivers are going away, and mobile usage is now the norm.
No. The norm is not printing.
Personally, I never got why the Open Source companies didn't get behind a project like LPRng. In the early 2000s, LPRng was awesome. It was basically an lpd on steroids. It worked like LPD and read printcap, but had support for pretty much any printing protocol, filter, access control lists, quota system, etc. The syntax of the configuration file made managing large site a breeze.
But you see, the open source companies like RedHat decided that simple printcap syntax was too complicated, so they had to throw away LPRng and switch to a significantly more complex syste like CUPS, just because it has a nice GUI and all that.
It only took as much as actually being able to have a paperless office.
My other signature is a car
and the crowd goes WILD!
I clicked once, and haven't seen beta in a while
Apple is not the developer of CUPS. Apple bought CUPS back in 2007 and hired its main developer.
So... the guy that works on it is hired by Apple, and the project is owned and financed by Apple. Isn't that essentially the same as Apple develops CUPS?
...they finally fixed their quota support. it has been painful to set up properly.
I am still waiting for the cups guys to realize that printers nowadays have scanners and fax functionality, too.
sane/efax/hylafax are fine (mostly), but somehow it feels wrong when you have to setup 3 daemons to configure one device...
I think the keyword there is companies. The main reason for CUPS is support for IPP, a particularly enterprisey protocol. I could tell that it's enterprisey because it's full of XML and I couldn't figure out how it's supposed to work. Once I got printing to work, I didn't bother to look further into it. Printing is just an occasional hassle for me.
Of course, once CUPS got the momentum, then CUPS got more support, more printer drivers, more GUI front-ends, so right now it's just easier to get a working system using CUPS than LPRng. I'm surprised that LPRng is still seeing development as late as 2012, and the web site apparently got tweaked in March this year.
Have a nice time.
CUPS 2.0, girl 1
captcha: quantify
Apple is not the developer of CUPS. Apple bought CUPS back in 2007 and hired its main developer.
So... the guy that works on it is hired by Apple, and the project is owned and financed by Apple. Isn't that essentially the same as Apple develops CUPS?
No. If Apple had developed it, it would not have had any command-line interface except for XML files and the "defaults" program, its interfaces would have been proprietary to Apple, and it would have been even more confusingly documented. It would never have become widely adopted across the Unix world, partly because Apple would not have chosen GPLv2. Instead, Lennart Poettering would have been so in awe of it that he would have created his own unstable version of it, which would immediately have been adopted across the Linux distributions to the exclusion of any other printing system, because Lennart is the best programmer and all crashes are everybody else's fault. It would have stabilized when he got bored and started copying another Apple innovation. Like, say, launchd.
CUPS was widely used before Apple bought it. Apple can't turn it into an Apple-like program without causing a user revolt, so it's still very much like how it was before Apple bought it.
Have a nice time.
I think Eric Raymond's ire is misplaced; CUPS was uniquely horrible back then.
Follow ESR on G+, it's hilarious. You probably won't last long.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Epson printers will actually work.
Honestly, I blame Epson for the failure, they cant write drivers to save their lives.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes, he's trolling,
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
*we* never wanted printer drivers, *we* just wanted printers to eat postscript and spit out pages
CUPS was horrible then, but Linux printing in general was about 15,000x times more horrible with LPD/LPR being the standard and leaving you with pretty much the choice between a postfix printer (which was pretty pricey until the mid-'00s) or an Epson dot matrix printer. There were a handful of print solutions but they were either very expensive or totally sucked.
CUPS made printing on Linux mostly painless.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I haven't turned on my printer in 5 years.
You must not work in an office then.
The future of printing is that tablets will make it obsolete,
Not in my lifetime or yours. I'm typing this at a desk that has so much paper on it I can barely see the desktop. Computers did not, do not and will not make paper obsolete. In actual fact computers make it easier than ever to generate vast quantities of printed documents and that is exactly what people do.
But the problem with the "paperless" office was portability.
That was merely one of many problems and not even close to the biggest problem. The biggest problem with the "paperless" office is flexibility, particularly with regard to changing work flows. Paper has many drawbacks but it has the HUGE advantage that it is enormously flexible and adaptable to different work flows. I can design a form and make lots of copies and change a work flow in minutes without anyone else needing access to a computer. To have a paperless system you need a significant amount of programming and process design every time you need to change a work flow.
It's possible to automate many work flows with electronic only documents but the work flows either need to be either fairly static or they need to fit the already existing infrastructure in place at an organization unless you are planning to make a big ($$) investment. For example at my company (a small manufacturer), we print our work instructions for jobs on the floor. Why? Primarily because the cost to make them electronic would be enormous (many new computers, lots of programming time, etc) and we would end up with a system that would be less flexible and cost more for marginal if any real benefit. Sure, I'd love to make it all paperless and maybe someday it will happen but doing so is a huge amount of work with very uncertain payback.
No. The norm is not printing.
Maybe on some other planet. Not in any office I've ever worked in.
CUPS -no double side printing ,firefox cant print anything but permissions is ok - and print from virtualbox and i thanks apple for littleness of their help in open source software .
Postscript. Postfix is a mail transfer agent :)
No. If Apple had developed it, it would not have had any command-line interface except for XML files and the "defaults" program, its interfaces would have been proprietary to Apple,
Yes that's why LLVM, Clang, OpenCL, Zero-Configuration, and WebKit only works on Apple machines.
and it would have been even more confusingly documented.
Yes because all open source software is meticulously documented.
It would never have become widely adopted across the Unix world, partly because Apple would not have chosen GPLv2.
Yes Apple would never choose GPLv2 unlike all the other GPLv2 software they've chosen to use.
CUPS was widely used before Apple bought it. Apple can't turn it into an Apple-like program without causing a user revolt, so it's still very much like how it was before Apple bought it.
Yes Apple is EVIL for not completely changing the software they own to be proprietary and they are also EVIL for forking software they didn't own (WebKit). Face it folks, Apple can do no right.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The built-in configuration tool is still an example of exactly how *not* write a GUI. Eric Raymond wrote about this in his "Luxury of Ignorance" essay back in 2004.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
There were many promises back then to clean up the mess. The "veriy positive feedback from the CUPS folks" was pure smoke in blown up the community backside, because they did *nothing* to clean up the mess in any release before now.
Old news, the Onion called it back in 2011: New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'
No I'm not...
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
IPP doesn't use XML, it uses a (flat) binary message encoding. I imagine that had IPP been developed a few years later things would have been different... And while it definitely supports what is needed in the enterprise, it also satisfies the consumer space - ~500 million printers in service today (from consumer inkjets to big iron office copiers) support IPP, as does *every* consumer and enterprise computer and mobile device (billions of devices). IPP scales well.
The problem with LPRng was that it was a mess of scripts and hacks to make a variety of printers work. Every "driver" worked differently, and (having spent a fair amount of time with it 20 years ago) making it all work without an expert supporting it was basically impossible. It continued to use an extended version of the LPD protocol (which has nothing other than an informative RFC to document it, with most implementations varying from the RFC in some way) and did not address some pretty basic security issues like hiding job information from other users.
Back in 1998 there was little support for standard languages or doing a proper protocol so that you could monitor a printer's state or cancel a job. Vendors used proprietary languages and protocols to lock you into their drivers, their platform, their products. The whole point of CUPS was to define a standard interface with standard options for drivers while providing a better security model. Yes, that did make it more complicated than LPD/LPRng, but that complexity was needed since printing is *hard* and the software needed to support it is non-trivial. IPP was chosen as the underlying protocol and model because it offered everything needed from regular users to enterprise.
Ultimately CUPS succeeded because it allowed people to print without becoming experts. It allowed Linux distributors to actually support printing, and for printer manufacturers and third parties to provide drivers that "just worked". And it did it using public standards and the very UNIX-y interface of piped commands.
While CUPS continues to carry some old baggage around to keep supporting old printers, the day will come when that is no longer necessary and a leaner version (possibly based on the ippserver code) will be able to replace it. Today the economics favor printers implementing common, open standards so that all platforms can support them without extra, expensive development. Within a few years, it should be possible to retire printer drivers entirely.
I print, therefore I am.
If you logged in, the system would happily remember your preference. When you tell the system that you don't want to be remembered, don't blame it for not remembering you.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The paperless office seems about as likely as the paperless bathroom.
"Not in my lifetime or yours."
Don't jinx it, man.
I haven't turned on my printer in 5 years.
You must not work in an office then.
Strange enough, I haven't printed anything in the office for ages, but use my printer at home all the time. Well, my wife does mostly :-)
CUPS was widely used before Apple bought it. Apple can't turn it into an Apple-like program without causing a user revolt, so it's still very much like how it was before Apple bought it.
Apple users are obviously not going to revolt if Apple turns it into an Apple-like program (anyway, the UI that I see is quite Apple-like).
And non-Apple users? They can be as revolting as they like. There is always the possibility to fork CUPS.
BTW, Apple is dual licensing CUPS: You can get it under the GPL, or under a license that allows you to keep your source code private, as long as you create a driver that works on Macs. Since many printer manufacturers for whatever reason didn't want to release their source code, this second license was responsible for a much bigger number of Mac printer drivers.
I wish there was a CUPS layer for Windows, so we could install it as a driver and just use the tinly little PPD like other Operating systems do rather than the 600-900Mb monstrosities that manufacturers provide as drivers.
Make America grate again!
He should have said Apple is not the "original" developer of CUPS which is true. They are the current developer and owner of CUPS.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
not as popular as that other thing
http://xkcd.com/467/
No. If Apple had developed it, it would not have had any command-line interface except for XML files and the "defaults" program, its interfaces would have been proprietary to Apple,
Yes that's why LLVM, Clang, OpenCL, Zero-Configuration, and WebKit only works on Apple machines.
LLVM and Clang were developed at the University of Illinois. OpenCL is a standard, not a program. Zeroconf is a standard, not a program. WebKit is a fork of KHTML from the KDE project. Try again.
What exactly do you use a printer in an office nowadays?
Invoices, bills, work instructions, checks, deposit slips, customer statements, engineering drawings, purchase orders, material safety data sheets, 1099 forms, W2 forms, I9 forms, pick lists, work orders, quality travelers, shipping labels, packing lists and lots more. I personally print about 1000-2000 pages per month. My (tiny) company probably prints around 3000 pages per month on average. This is very normal for even a very small business.
I have worked a LOT of places and I've never seen a functional office that didn't have a lot of printing going on. You may not need much for your particular job but I am fairly certain that your business does a huge amount of printing unless you are doing something quite unusual. HP, Brother, Canon and the rest don't sell all those printers because they look nice.
Uh, CUPS made things new, but darned if I can figure out the magic of how its filters work compared to, say, LPRng, and the last time I went spelunking around in the CUPS code, well, I've since shutdown that print server and have outsourced printing to groups who are about as enthusiastic to support printing (oh boy, random software programs being thrown at random software execution environments, plus a real-world interface that jams when that room gets humid so ya gotta prop the door open, see?) as we were.
ptype = (cups_ptype_t) atoi(dests[i].options[j].value); // ewwww. But whatever.
Non-engineers don't really need much paper...
Bullshit they don't. I defy you to find me anyone working in accounting or HR that isn't positively drowning in paper. Some have more than others but most real businesses use quite a lot of printed paper.
Printing has always been uniquely horrible no matter the OS. Printing in DOS was always a fun exercise in hoping your program talked to your printer - or that your printer's language emulation was "good enough" for the program (and it didn't try to use fancy features). Oh yeah, if you were a developer, you had to hope whatever library you used worked well enough. Then there was network printing, a unique beast in an of itself where you hoped the drivers worked and the redirector could capture the output.
Windows was probably among the first to have a unified printing and graphics layer where Windows would, by Microsoft dictate, manage the printer for you, so all printers that wanted to support Windows must talk to Windows to talk to the printer (no hitting parallel ports directly, which also meant Windows networking could do network printers transparently), and provide the necessary interfaces for Windows to tell it what to print (i.e., a high level GDI interface).
Printing in Unix was well, not really well defined because printing is complex. Unix has supported a basic line printer since inception (teletype), but if you want graphics or other stuff, it was complicated by the fact that Unix had no native GUI toolsets or anything. so most developers invented their own.
And printers themselves ended up being unique beasts with their own quirks due to their electromechanical nature. So much so that a standard interface was going to be complex and practically impossible to do the Unix way.
CUPS was such a godsend that when Apple was creating OS X, they decided to not bother with a print layer of their own, and instead use CUPS as the engine powering the OS X print subsystem. (Prior to this, MacOS Classic had its own print subsystem).
Webkit works on Linux machines as well, Konqueror gives you the choice of Webkit or KHTML
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
http://www.bidet-shower.co.uk/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
LLVM and Clang were developed at the University of Illinois.
And Apple hired the team that developed LLVM to continue to develop it further. Just like CUPS. As for Clang, it was developed originally by Apple to work with LLVM because Apple had performance and philosophical issues with gcc.
OpenCL is a standard, not a program.
OpenCL standards for Open Computing Language. It is also a standard as many companies have adopted it. That's like saying C99 isn't language but a standard.
Zeroconf is a standard, not a program.
Again, because something becomes a standard does not mean it isn't used for what it was originally designed.
WebKit is a fork of KHTML from the KDE project. Try again.
Originally, WebKit was based entirely on KHTML. As development as continued, it is bears little resemblance to the original code. Apple has chosen to continue to release as open source even parts they were not required to do.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple is not the developer of CUPS. Apple bought CUPS back in 2007 [slashdot.org] and hired its main developer.
So, how does that not make Apple the developer of CUPS 2.0, again? If a company buys something and continues to develop it then that company is now the developer. Apple may not be the creator (i.e., originator) of CUPS, but they most certainly are the current development company.
CUPS was widely used before Apple bought it. Apple can't turn it into an Apple-like program without causing a user revolt, so it's still very much like how it was before Apple bought it.
...And so aren't you glad that Microsoft didn't buy it; or there would be nothing left of CUPS even remotely recognizable (or usable) outside the Windows-world...
It still astonishes me that 13+ years after Apple introduced their open source operating system, Darwin, that people in IT forget that it's there under the GUI in all its Unix-like goodness. I forgot how long that list was for the projects they are involved in or started! Nice link, too bad most people like "RR" won't bother to look at it and will just keep screaming the Apple is proprietary with everything trope.
I will admit there are two things still missing.
There is quite a bit more than two things missing though I agree with the deficiencies you identify among others.
Job instructions can be kept in text files that can be pushed to tablets. Guaranteeing that every person has updated instructions.
You REALLY do not want tablets on most manufacturing floors. The products we work with would trash a tablet in about a week if not sooner and we don't even do anything especially messy. Furthermore that would require buying an expensive computer for every worker on our shop floor, many of which would, ummm... disappear. What we do is keep the Controlled master copy online and then print a reference copy at the beginning of each job. The reference copy then circulates back to engineering or other parties that need it and the master controlled copies get updated for the next job. Works quite well actually.
Tablets have a variety of problems for document management:
1) The problem you mentioned that you cannot effectively annotate documents. In manufacturing, work instructions frequently need to be updated, annotated, etc. People are working on the problem but there is no universally practical solution imminent that I'm aware of.
2) Tablets break and get stolen. My wife works in a doctor's office and they use ipads for documenting patient data (good use of them) and they've had several of them stolen and one dropped and broken. You can drop paper all day long and it won't break.
3) If the software on the tablet you are working with doesn't fit your need it's a much bigger problem to fix than just modifying some paper forms.
4) Tablets are hugely impractical in a dirty production environment. Greasy/dirty fingers and tablets don't mix well.
5) Tablets require either buying or developing software to accommodate most work flows. This can be a very expensive proposition.
6) Tablets are a capital expense that has to be depreciated.
7) Most tablets are designed with consumer markets in mind rather than business needs. They are hard to lock down tightly if needed.
I can keep going. I think tablets are going to make huge inroads over time but anyone that thinks they will eliminate paper from offices is delusional.
In LPD you would configure the printcap to run ghostscript (basically your printer drivers) to convert the postscript to the native printer language. The LPD did allow non-postscript printers to be used this way. It didnt work all that badly.
I still print contracts that need to be signed and stored for years to come.
Yes, in theory, the contracts could be digitally signed PDF's or whatever. But when in ten years or so a conflict arises, I'll much more confident if I can pull out a paper contract than fiddle around with trying to hunt down certificate servers that are no longer around.
Paper use can be reduced, but it is a long way from being completely replaced.
I call shenanigans. If so, fuck CUPS!
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
He should have said Apple is not the "original" developer of CUPS which is true. They are the current developer and owner of CUPS.
(And current employer of the original developer of CUPS, unless he's left.)
I never knew CUPS was an Apple product but I remember installing it back in, what, probably 2000 on some Linux machines in college, as part of my work-study job. That must have been immediately after it was introduced.
You are right: the LPR system it replaced was awful. I don't remember much about CUPS except that I got it to work.
Offices I have worked in have had very little paper in them over my career (starting just before the Iraq War) but I work in tech so maybe we're on the leading edge. I literally can't think of the last time I had to touch a piece of paper specifically for work -- maybe signing my employment contract? Sometimes I use pen and paper to work out algorithms but more often I use a whiteboard.
What kind of office do you work in? There is a great diversity.
this second license was responsible for much fewer open source printer drivers.
Let's flip that around so that we get the full picture.
No. If Apple had developed it, it would not have had any command-line interface except for XML files and the "defaults" program, its interfaces would have been proprietary to Apple,
Yes that's why LLVM, Clang, OpenCL, Zero-Configuration, and WebKit only works on Apple machines.
Wait, what? Where'd all this hostility come from? I've used Macs for 25 years, and I'm using a Mac to type this. I like parts of Apple and MacOS X, but I recognize some of its shortcomings. In my opinion, nothing is perfect.
I didn't say that Apple does not do open source. CUPS, LLVM, Clang, and KHTML (predecessor of WebKit) were not invented at Apple, and Apple complies with the license terms of the original projects. ZeroConf and OpenCL are examples of basic infrastructure that Apple decided would be in their interests if they were widely adopted. Apple has some surprisingly small teams for some projects, and I think of ZeroConf as a Stuart Cheshire project more than a faceless corporate project. Even so, Apple initially did their open-source releases under the Apple Public Source License, which is not compatible with GPL, and the existing OpenCL kernels are all proprietary. Or did you not notice that Mesa had to reimplement OpenCL from scratch?
In contrast, I notice Apple protocols such as AirPlay and AirPrint, the whole Designed for iPhone licensing system, and how Apple is going out of their way to avoid any GPLv3 software such as Samba 3.
CUPS was widely used before Apple bought it. Apple can't turn it into an Apple-like program without causing a user revolt, so it's still very much like how it was before Apple bought it.
Yes Apple is EVIL for not completely changing the software they own to be proprietary and they are also EVIL for forking software they didn't own (WebKit). Face it folks, Apple can do no right.
I don't see how you got that conclusion from what I wrote. I said that CUPS was not developed at Apple, so its peculiarities are not typical to Apple.
Have a nice time.
I notice Apple protocols such as AirPlay and AirPrint, the whole Designed for iPhone licensing system, and how Apple is going out of their way to avoid any GPLv3 software such as Samba 3.
Oops, I meant Samba 4. Starting in MacOS X 10.7 Lion, Apple has used the closed-source SMBX instead of Samba to provide SMB service, and Apple's SMB client is licensed under APSL 2.0, which is not compatible with GPL. Apple's SMB software has also been slower and buggier than Samba.
I think Apple's aversion to GPLv3 is wrongheaded, as is Google's avoidance of GPL in Android other than the kernel. I'm not saying that it's evil, just a mistake.
Have a nice time.
Argh! No! CUPS did not originally come from Apple, and Apple did not own CUPS back in 2000. Apple bought CUPS and its main developer in 2007.
Have a nice time.
I think Apple's aversion to GPLv3 is wrongheaded, as is Google's avoidance of GPL in Android other than the kernel. I'm not saying that it's evil, just a mistake.
Many companies have an aversion to GPLv3 for good reasons. Apple is fine with GPLv2 and BSD and Apache style licenses. GPLv3 with their restrictions puts Apple into a legal quagmire they don't want to be in.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Sorry had postfix on the brain from work. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I've always preferred 38D cups!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
+4, Informative
That epic retard Poettering announced today that a new systemd module called systemd-cupsd is beginning development. It will be tightly coupled to the entire systemd ecosystem that its pathetic apologists call modular.
If systemd-cupsd is not started or crashes PID 1 will initiate a system shutdown.
Printing on Linux is much better than anything else.
It supports more printers than OSX and Windows combined.