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Announcing printerdAnnouncing printerdPosted May 22, 2012 13:45 UTC (Tue) by cthart (subscriber, #4457)Parent article: Announcing printerd
What problems are they trying to solve?
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Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 14:04 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
The announcement says "it aims to be a modern print spooler for Linux." It looks like "modern" includes D-Bus as a high priority. "Having a D-Bus interface means that applications wanting to print automatically get to use printerd asynchronously."
I can guess that having a printing system not controlled by Apple might also be a goal, although printerd would still require CUPS drivers.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 14:21 UTC (Tue) by aaron (subscriber, #282) [Link] Some reasons, off the top of my head:
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 15:11 UTC (Tue) by mbt (guest, #81044) [Link]
Not enough daemons? How long will it be before this code gets merged into systemd?
If all your users are sitting at seats around your single host, you don't need network transport for reaching printerd/systemd. It can even wake up your printer when you start printing.
Argh! With all these daemons around, we need an exorcism.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 15:19 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
I hope you'll forgive the stupid question: why does this need to be a daemon at all? What gain is there from a constantly running process rather than an executable launched when required?
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 15:35 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I suppose you have a way to manage the print spool centrally rather then trying to deal with lock files and whatnot to avoid race conditions when you have lots of programs kicking off print jobs simultaneously.
Normally I am happy to see new developments, but I personally really don't understand the point. The 'print spool' itself has never been much of a problem.
It's the printers themselves and the applications needed to properly support print jobs.
Like: I have to print labels in a automated manner on a Xerox Laser using PCL. Or a home label maker. Or if I want to use a Lexmark printer in Linux or the dozens and dozens of things that Linux tends to really suck at.
The task 'Add or remove pdfs from print spool' doesn't strike me as a problem that users had to overcome in the past. Other then the fact that the GUIs for selecting printers and printer features are miserable, tend to be missing controls, and have no consistency.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 15:39 UTC (Tue) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link]
> why does this need to be a daemon at all? What gain is there from a constantly running process rather than an executable launched when required?
From the dbus homepage:
> D-Bus […] makes it simple […] to launch applications and daemons on demand when their services are needed.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 23:05 UTC (Tue) by lindi (subscriber, #53135) [Link]
From doc/TODO: "Service termination when no clients or jobs running".
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 16:14 UTC (Tue) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #71063) [Link]
> 1. Not enough daemons. (If history is a guide, printerd would run in addition to the various CUPS daemons, "just in case.")
Although printerd can be on-demand, due to the D-Bus interface. Or it could provide a cups compatibility layer.
> 6. Force everyone to go graphical/PDF, since we don't need to support receipt/invoice/check/line/Braille printers anymore.
Presumably applications where that is relevant wouldn't use printerd's D-Bus interface, but talk to (and require) cups directly.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 22:01 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> What problems are they trying to solve?
I don't understand that either. The announcement just has a list of buzzwords but doesn't explain to me the rationale behind this development or how it'll integrate with the system. I'm not sure how this is different from, improves upon or integrates with CUPS which is by far the most widely deployed and most supported printing environment (except for Windows native drivers but that has a non-portable design anyway).
It'd be useful to see a longer form article of the whys and wherefores by the authors of this software instead of the wild and misinformed speculation that is likely to occur given the lack of information.
Announcing printerd Posted May 22, 2012 23:22 UTC (Tue) by lindi (subscriber, #53135) [Link]
Being polkit-enabled means you can configure administration policies in a centralized place instead of separately for each service. I've seen places where people type root password to https://localhost:631/ to be able to add printers...
Announcing printerd Posted May 26, 2012 14:33 UTC (Sat) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
I often do that because the GNOME print wrappers around CUPS aren't very good. Actually I don't use https.
Announcing printerd Posted May 23, 2012 12:34 UTC (Wed) by nsoranzo (subscriber, #34668) [Link]
Tim replied to a similar question in his blog:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/2012/05/10/announcing-printerd/co...
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