Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. DNS-SD is the Right Answer (which is not exactly the same thing as mdns). But getting a standard one school server, and a classroom of XOs solution in place for 9.1 using a standard name (printer, say) would be a good first step; we can handle autodiscovery (via CUPs or something else) for 9.2. The current cups dns-sd is written in perl. It apparently works pretty well in Fedora but I know OLPC remove perl due to space. Apparently there is general mainline (Fedora and cups) for a rewrite in something else. Peter ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 4:31 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 8:57 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. DNS-SD is the Right Answer (which is not exactly the same thing as mdns). But getting a standard one school server, and a classroom of XOs solution in place for 9.1 using a standard name (printer, say) would be a good first step; we can handle autodiscovery (via CUPs or something else) for 9.2. For the 9.1 timeframe we have several services that we'll want to coordinate XS and XO so we need a reasonably good answer at least. I hadn't heard of DNS-SD so I'll make sure we check it out. ... We should not ignore the fact that OLPCs are deployed in places like Birmingham and Montevideo, which have abundant access to paper and printers. Ah, yes. On this thread people are arguing quite strongly for their personal (and opposed) views, I can't quite figure out why. We'll add a tool, and people will be smart and use it where appropriate. And whether they print or not, the world won't end. One thing I do want to mention -- an overly simplisting printing tool will land us in hot water. If we do printing, we better pay attention to the standard dialogs and provide most of the options in there, lest we replay the Torvals-vs-gnome flamefest. (Now, flag this point for _later_ discussion. What optiosn to provide and not provide is a big flamefest of its own, but let's have it a bit later. ) cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Justin Gallardo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Over at the OSL, we were able to get new printers showing in the MeshBox, and had just started working on coming up with some interface for configuration. We had some hang ups with some of the code used to detect printers over avahi, but other than that things seem to work. http://staff.osuosl.org/~jirwin/sugar_printers.png A fun picture of sugar actually displaying 100 some odd printers(not a mockup). Could you prepare a short presentation on this work? We can arrange to present it remotely, via telephone, or whatever, but this seems like an alternative we should consider. Bird in the hand, etc. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 8:57 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. DNS-SD is the Right Answer (which is not exactly the same thing as mdns). But getting a standard one school server, and a classroom of XOs solution in place for 9.1 using a standard name (printer, say) would be a good first step; we can handle autodiscovery (via CUPs or something else) for 9.2. I hope it is clear that I'm not saying that we will *never* do autodiscovery or more fancy printing features; I'm just trying to ensure that *something* useful to *someone* lands in 9.1, ideally in a way that isn't completely broken from a design perspective. There's a lot of activity work to be done to enable printing from the various activities; I'd like that to be able to happen concurrently in the 9.2 timeframe with efforts to improve printer discovery, setup, etc. We should not ignore the fact that OLPCs are deployed in places like Birmingham and Montevideo, which have abundant access to paper and printers. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
Ok - I had missed the whole thread in my earlier reply. On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:24 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. Ok - adding the XS side of this is something we can do in the 9.1 lifecycle. As I mentioned in my other email, the mechanical part of getting printing done is not the most interesting part of the job. It's the social issues around it -- handling of quotas, priorities, etc that I think deserve most attention. Paper, ink and printer time are extremely valuable. So far we have not built anything yet to share handle limited resources across users yet -- and doing it across something so lumpy as printing resources it going to be an interesting exercise in building social software. Jim talked quite a bit about this back when I was first @ 1CC, and I've seen it firsthand in many schools and tertiaries. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On 10/21/08, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:24 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. Ok - adding the XS side of this is something we can do in the 9.1 lifecycle. As I mentioned in my other email, the mechanical part of getting printing done is not the most interesting part of the job. It's the I think we're on the same page here. For 9.1, what's the *least* work we can do to get *something* done on the printing front? Once the basics are out there, hopefully we'll have community motivated to take it the rest of the way, whatever that is. From the comments here, it seems like the no-discovery no-server CUPS client library could work with a fixed server name (or control panel with IP address box to fill in), and we can take it from there gradually. If anyone wants to flesh out a solid proposal, though, I'm all ears. A proof of concept one way or the other would be *very* useful. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
c. scott ananian wrote: On 10/21/08, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:24 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. Ok - adding the XS side of this is something we can do in the 9.1 lifecycle. As I mentioned in my other email, the mechanical part of getting printing done is not the most interesting part of the job. It's the I think we're on the same page here. For 9.1, what's the *least* work we can do to get *something* done on the printing front? Once the basics are out there, hopefully we'll have community motivated to take it the rest of the way, whatever that is. From the comments here, it seems like the no-discovery no-server CUPS client library could work with a fixed server name (or control panel with IP address box to fill in), and we can take it from there gradually. If anyone wants to can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:03 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think we're on the same page here. For 9.1, what's the *least* work we can do to get *something* done on the printing front? Fantastic! Once the basics are out there, hopefully we'll have community motivated to take it the rest of the way, whatever that is. Hmmm, this needs a serious think and a design. It's not an incremental step-at-a-time progress thing that we can expect the community naturally take on. Strong design-and-code leads emerge less frequently, and this is an important aspect of getting this feature to work well. OTOH, would love to see someone prepared to prove me wrong :-) On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 1:57 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. I definitely want to have a service announcement scheme for the XO to discover: - what services are offered in the network - by which server - some additional arbitrary metadata (version, supported extensions for example) - reasonably scalable - chatty stuff squandering network resources is something we cannot have - optionally non-trivially-spoofable (not sure if this is reasonable to expect) in short, something a notch or two up from hardcoding local dns names. Douglas has been looking into mdns/avahi (for the activity installer control panel) -- and from what he saw in the initial review I'm not 200% convinced. By which I mean I want to review it a bit more, perhaps it's indeed the best scheme, but it sure looked chatty. So I guess that's one proposal for this 9.1 series. The printing proposal would then use this service (or DNS if we fail to deliver!).The XS side needs a fully fledged automagically configuring cups setup which is not entirely trivial. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 08:57 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can's mdns/avahi help with discovery? it'd be a shame to have to manually configure a server address or name. Certainly; this is what Apple does; the HP printer I bought recently is so advertising itself this way. I haven't seen Linux using this information, however, so there *may* be work to be done in Linux. How far/well mdns scales with the mesh routing protocols, however, is another question. - Jim -- Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] One Laptop Per Child ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:24 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. Ok - adding the XS side of this is something we can do in the 9.1 lifecycle. As I mentioned in my other email, the mechanical part of getting printing done is not the most interesting part of the job. It's the social issues around it -- handling of quotas, priorities, etc that I think deserve most attention. Paper, ink and printer time are extremely valuable. printer selection needs to happen on the client, but all the other things that you list are server-side issues, aren't they? David Lang ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
Over at the OSL, we were able to get new printers showing in the MeshBox, and had just started working on coming up with some interface for configuration. We had some hang ups with some of the code used to detect printers over avahi, but other than that things seem to work. http://staff.osuosl.org/~jirwin/sugar_printers.png A fun picture of sugar actually displaying 100 some odd printers(not a mockup). On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 1:24 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We should consider adding basic Print support for 9.1. In the past this has foundered on questions like, what brand(s) of printers? what connection mechanism? It seems impossible to support every printer and every connection mechanism in a reasonable amount of NAND space. *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. * Add basic printing support to Write, Read, and Browse; set PRINTER env variable. * for future, add support to Paint, Record, etc. for 9.1. Again, I can give a quick talk just restating the above, and hopefully spurring a discussion about how much work this would or would not be and whether we can afford to do this for 9.1 (or can't afford not to do it), but I'd love it if someone would volunteer to 'own' the issue and make a more concrete proposal, present a demo, investigate other issues involved, etc. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Justin Gallardo ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
Peter Krenesky (CC'd) from the Open Source Lab at Oregon State has discussed some printing basics with me, and may have already begun further research in this area. There is some info in the wiki on the subject: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Enabling_CUPS, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Printing_Design, but I'm not sure how far along any hacking has actually gotten. - Eben On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 4:24 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We should consider adding basic Print support for 9.1. In the past this has foundered on questions like, what brand(s) of printers? what connection mechanism? It seems impossible to support every printer and every connection mechanism in a reasonable amount of NAND space. *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. * Add basic printing support to Write, Read, and Browse; set PRINTER env variable. * for future, add support to Paint, Record, etc. for 9.1. Again, I can give a quick talk just restating the above, and hopefully spurring a discussion about how much work this would or would not be and whether we can afford to do this for 9.1 (or can't afford not to do it), but I'd love it if someone would volunteer to 'own' the issue and make a more concrete proposal, present a demo, investigate other issues involved, etc. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 4:24 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We should consider adding basic Print support for 9.1. In the past this has foundered on questions like, what brand(s) of printers? what connection mechanism? It seems impossible to support every printer and every connection mechanism in a reasonable amount of NAND space. *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. Martin will probably hate me for this... If you can assume the existence of an XS (or at least a suitably configured web server), what about doing printing via file upload in the Browse activity? Punt ALL the complexity of printer drivers/queues/etc to the server. Instead of Write generating a postscript/pdf file and queuing it, just send the file directly. CUPS already has management of the print queues via http (which is really just ipp). So why not add the ability to accept all the 'standard' file formats which XO activities generate? Bill Bogstad ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
We should consider adding basic Print support for 9.1. In the past this has foundered on questions like, what brand(s) of printers? what connection mechanism? It seems impossible to support every printer and every connection mechanism in a reasonable amount of NAND space. *But*, we should be able to: * Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a decent selection of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default. * Add basic printing support to Write, Read, and Browse; set PRINTER env variable. * for future, add support to Paint, Record, etc. for 9.1. Again, I can give a quick talk just restating the above, and hopefully spurring a discussion about how much work this would or would not be and whether we can afford to do this for 9.1 (or can't afford not to do it), but I'd love it if someone would volunteer to 'own' the issue and make a more concrete proposal, present a demo, investigate other issues involved, etc. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
