Although I don't think your style to put your opinion helps a lot to get support, I agree on that:
CUPS makes it very easy for hardware vendors and developers to get full Linux support for their boxes. Now there is a sort of standardised interface to printing, to a GUI - something that was deerly missing for Unix dektops for a long time
CUPS comes with 6 drivers/"filters" that cover roughly 60 - 70 % of all printers out there.
CUPS supports _a_n_y_ present or future PostScript printer and lets you use all its built-in features like: duplexing, stapling and punching the output, changing the resolution, taking a red paper as a cover sheet from tray no.1 and the rest from tray no. 3 (white paper) etc. PostScript drivers are "free" in the sense: they're bundled with the hardware, they're provided by the manufacturer, their important information is written in a non-protected (technically and legally) ASCII file called "PostScript Printer Description" (PPD). In MS Windows and MacOS the Printer Driver Software parses the PPD, reads what features the printer supports (duplexing, stapling, punching...), generates a GUI (grafical user interface) and offers the user the choices (duplexing, stapling, punching,...) at his fingertips. Every vendor has his "own" set of commands to control the special features of "his" printer. As the PPD specification defined by Adobe is public, this is no harm in practical terms. And CUPS now is able to read, interprete these very same PPDs to generate a similar GUI for printing to a specific printer. The standard CUPS-GUI now is a fully functional web interface. That means you just grab the "free" PPD from a Mac or Windows box and copy it 1:1 onto your CUPS-enabled Linux/Unix box and you're done.
What about support for non-PostScript printers?! CUPS uses the ingenious trick to describe _t_h_e_i_r_ capabilities likewise in a PPD. The art is to write those "fake" PPDs for a non-PostScript printer you don't hardly have any vendor-specific information about.
That's why ESP PrintPro has advantages for some users or companies. It's commercial, it's closed, it costs money, it's a GUI for CUPS: but it comes with 2300 drivers/"PPDs" many of which are based on licensed NDA infos (Non Disclosure Agreements) by the device vendors and produce much better results than their standard ghostscript counterparts.
As for "free" PPDs for standard ghostscript filters: they are under heavy development just now. Check out
http://www.linuxprinting.org/
It's the newly renamed home page of Grant Taylor, the author of the Linux Printing HOWTO. He has started to build a (so far incomplete) database about printers. In there goes infoormation about -- which model -- prints how well -- with what ghostscript driver -- supporting which ghostscript options? Everybody can help collect all the basic information.
Now why is that so helpful in relation to "free" drivers/CUPS-PPDs?
This bloke Grant has also written a script "cups-o-matic" which lets you generate a working CUPS-PPD (for non-PostScript printers!!!) which use standard GNU-ghostscript for the rasterization. Go there, choose the printer you want to use, see if there is enough info already in the database to generate a PPD for you online. If not: help to fill in the info. Grant hopes to be able to support _a_l_l_ ghostscript filters/drivers with their respective options through CUPS within 6 - 8 weeks...
Now if KDE succeeded to create a "KUPS" frontend for CUPS in time...
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Although I don't think your style to put your opinion helps a lot to get support, I agree on that:
CUPS makes it very easy for hardware vendors and developers to get full Linux support for their boxes. Now there is a sort of standardised interface to printing, to a GUI - something that was deerly missing for Unix dektops for a long time
CUPS comes with 6 drivers/"filters" that cover roughly 60 - 70 % of all printers out there.
/"PPDs" many of which are based on licensed NDA infos (Non Disclosure Agreements) by the device vendors and produce much better results than their standard ghostscript counterparts.
CUPS supports _a_n_y_ present or future PostScript printer and lets you use all its built-in features like: duplexing, stapling and punching the output, changing the resolution, taking a red paper as a cover sheet from tray no.1 and the rest from tray no. 3 (white paper) etc. PostScript drivers are "free" in the sense: they're bundled with the hardware, they're provided by the manufacturer, their important information is written in a non-protected (technically and legally) ASCII file called "PostScript Printer Description" (PPD). In MS Windows and MacOS the Printer Driver Software parses the PPD, reads what features the printer supports (duplexing, stapling, punching...), generates a GUI (grafical user interface) and offers the user the choices (duplexing, stapling, punching,...) at his fingertips. Every vendor has his "own" set of commands to control the special features of "his" printer. As the PPD specification defined by Adobe is public, this is no harm in practical terms. And CUPS now is able to read, interprete these very same PPDs to generate a similar GUI for printing to a specific printer. The standard CUPS-GUI now is a fully functional web interface. That means you just grab the "free" PPD from a Mac or Windows box and copy it 1:1 onto your CUPS-enabled Linux/Unix box and you're done.
What about support for non-PostScript printers?! CUPS uses the ingenious trick to describe _t_h_e_i_r_ capabilities likewise in a PPD. The art is to write those "fake" PPDs for a non-PostScript printer you don't hardly have any vendor-specific information about.
That's why ESP PrintPro has advantages for some users or companies. It's commercial, it's closed, it costs money, it's a GUI for CUPS: but it comes with 2300 drivers
As for "free" PPDs for standard ghostscript filters: they are under heavy development just now. Check out
http://www.linuxprinting.org/
It's the newly renamed home page of Grant Taylor, the author of the Linux Printing HOWTO. He has started to build a (so far incomplete) database about printers. In there goes infoormation about
-- which model
-- prints how well
-- with what ghostscript driver
-- supporting which ghostscript options?
Everybody can help collect all the basic information.
Now why is that so helpful in relation to "free" drivers/CUPS-PPDs?
This bloke Grant has also written a script "cups-o-matic" which lets you generate a working CUPS-PPD (for non-PostScript printers!!!) which use standard GNU-ghostscript for the rasterization. Go there, choose the printer you want to use, see if there is enough info already in the database to generate a PPD for you online. If not: help to fill in the info. Grant hopes to be able to support _a_l_l_ ghostscript filters/drivers with their respective options through CUPS within 6 - 8 weeks...
Now if KDE succeeded to create a "KUPS" frontend for CUPS in time...