I am sponsoring this fasttrack for the X engineering team and have set
the timeout to one week from today, Thursday, May 14.
Since the interfaces being removed have been reviewed and imported in
cases reviewed both at PSARC & LSARC, both ARC's are cc'ed, though the
case is submitted to PSARC for review.
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith at sun.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
Template Version: @(#)sac_nextcase 1.68 02/23/09 SMI
This information is Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems
1. Introduction
1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
EOF of Xprint
1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier:
Author: Alan Coopersmith
1.3 Date of This Document:
07 May, 2009
4. Technical Description
The X.Org community recently released Xorg server version 1.6. This
version no longer includes the Xprint variant of the X server to generate
output in page description formats like PostScript and PCL and to either
save that to a file or send to the printer via the lp system. X.Org has
also deprecated all of the Xprint client libraries and utilities, and will
not be including them in X11R7.5 or any future releases.
Xprint was originally created by the X Consortium under contract to the
Open Group to serve as the printing backend for the CDE 2.1 release.
Sun integrated Xprint into Solaris with the upgrade to X11R6.4 in
Solaris 7 11/99, but never integrated most of the CDE or Motif support
to use Xprint.
Xprint was never widely adopted outside of CDE and Motif, and since
the last maintainer of Xprint moved on to other projects (such as
integrating ksh93 into OpenSolaris) a few years ago, little activity
has happened on Xprint. The Sun X team tried to get Xprint adoption
in StarOffice and Netscape, but those applications chose other
printing solutions. While the Xprint code was integrated into the
Mozilla community code base, it is not built by default in the
community code base, and not built in the Solaris bundled builds of
the Mozilla or Firefox browsers.
The OpenSolaris 2008.05 release shipped without the Xprint server or libXp
library, and no bugs were filed, nor are we aware of any complaints about
their lack of inclusion. (They were included in the 2008.11 release, and
are still in the 2009.06 release.)
This case announces the EOF of, and removes, the Xprint server. It also
removes without EOF notice, some additional Xprint libraries & utilities
that were added only in the Nevada train and which have not yet shipped in
a formal Solaris release. The undocumented pclcomp binary which was used
only by the Xprint PCL3 backend will also be removed.
The libXp library that has been shipped in Solaris since Solaris 7 11/99
is declared obsolete, but at this time we have no plans to remove so that
binary compatibility will not be broken.
The only known consumers of Xprint in Solaris consolidations outside of
the programs being removed in this case are:
- dtcm(1), the CDE Calendar Manager (see LSARC/2001/526)
Removal in progress as part of the CDE EOF (LSARC 2007/531)
- mp(1) print filter (see PSARC 2000/199)
mp defaults to printing via other mechanisms besides Xprint, and will
still be able to print over the network to Xprint servers on other
systems when the Xprint options are used, so this removal does not
depend on any mp changes.
This case delivers in two phases:
1) In a patch release, announces the obsolesence of the Xprint system,
and future removal plans for the Xprint server itself.
Exported Interfaces:
--------------------
/usr/openwin/bin/Xprint Obsolete PSARC 1998/299: was Standard
/usr/openwin/bin/libXp.so.1 Obsolete PSARC 1998/299: was Standard
<X11/extensions/Print.h> Obsolete PSARC 1998/299: was Standard
<X11/extensions/PrintStr.h> Obsolete PSARC 1998/299: was Standard
XpExtension protocol Obsolete PSARC 1998/299: was Standard
/usr/openwin/bin/pclcomp Obsolete PSARC 2000/410: no stability listed
2) In a minor release, removes the following from the X consolidation:
The entire SUNWxprint-server package, including /usr/X11/bin/Xprt
The entire SUNWxwpft package, containing the Xprt printer font metrics
information.
From SUNWxwplt and related packages, the binaries & libraries listed below.
Exported Interfaces:
--------------------
/usr/openwin/bin/Xprint Removed [1]
/usr/X11/bin/Xprint Removed [1]
/usr/X11/bin/xplsprinters Removed [2]
/usr/X11/bin/xprehashprinterlist Removed [2]
/usr/X11/lib/libXprintUtil.so Removed [2]
/usr/X11/lib/libXprintAppUtil.so Removed [2]
/usr/X11/include/X11/XprintUtil/xprintutil.h Removed [2]
/usr/X11/include/X11/XprintAppUtil/xpapputil.h Removed [2]
xlsfonts Xprint font options Removed [3]
xlogo -print* options Removed [4]
/usr/openwin/bin/pclcomp Removed [5]
[1] Added as Standard in PSARC 1998/299
[2] Added as Uncommitted in LSARC 2008/509, only shipped in Nevada,
never in a minor release of Solaris.
[3] Added as Committed in PSARC 2008/178, only shipped in Nevada,
never in a minor release of Solaris.
[4] Added as Committed in PSARC 2008/177, only shipped in Nevada,
never in a minor release of Solaris.
[5] Added in PSARC 2000/410: no stability listed, no man page or other
documentation ever shipped
6. Resources and Schedule
6.4. Steering Committee requested information
6.4.1. Consolidation C-team Name:
X Consolidation (Desktop C-Team)
6.5. ARC review type: FastTrack
6.6. ARC Exposure: open
