Hi, Norm Jacobs has just sent out this proposal to the printing community which I think is most significant for us here in the Desktop communities. Instead of cross posting, I suggest if this affect you in any sort of way and you either want to voice out now or contribute, this is a good time to do so. I know of the potential impact of this on GNOME/JDS, but I am though curious how does this impact others like KDE/Xfce/FVWM/Enlightenment/ WindowMaker ? I am pretty excited about this development though it meant more work for me :)
Subject: [printing-discuss] Integrating CUPS and more printing bits in Solaris From: Norm Jacobs <Norm.Jacobs at Sun.COM> Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:25:09 -0600 To: printing-discuss at opensolaris.org We are looking at integrating CUPS into Solaris as a choice for printing. This really means CUPS, new attendant add-on packages, and enabling CUPS support in some existing packages that we ship. 1. We will ship packaging for both LP and CUPS. 2. You will be able to install LP, CUPS, or both. 3. You will be able to run either one, but not both simultaneously. (It's technically possible to do so, but we believe that it has a very limited use and just makes things more confusing. ) 4. There will be a tool (cli) that allows you to switch between LP and CUPS. (It will migrate basic queue configuration between print services.) The intention is not to have people moving back and forth at a whim. The intention is to allow you to select a print service and use it. We have identified the following packages to include, modify, and/or update Package Version (or later) CUPS 1.3.4 new pyCups 0.99 new CUPS ddk 1.2.3 new Gutenprint 5.1.4 upgrade + enable cups support HPLIP 2.7.10 upgrade + enable cups support Foomatic 3.0.2 upgrade + enable cups support GhostScript 8.60 upgrade + enable cupsraster driver ImageMagick 6.3.4 currently at 6.3.4 psutils p17 currently at p17 a2ps 4.13 currently at 4.13 enscript 1.6.1 new mpage 2.5.5 new pnm2ppa 1.1.2 new xpp 1.5 new GTK enable cups support Firefox/T-bird enable cups support StarOffice enable cups support Samba enable cups support There are lots of things to work out here, but we thought that we would try to engage people early to get your input, assistance and expertise. If you have any suggestions on things that you would like to see integrated in this space, features that you would like to see enabled, and/or any constructive comments, please feel free to do so. -Norm PS. As we move forward here, we intend on discussing all of the changes on this forum. I will follow this up with a strawman proposal for a print service selection facility and the basic layout of cups configuration, services, and packaging for Solaris. ----------> -Ghee