The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org)

Posted Feb 26, 2004 21:38 UTC (Thu) by pksings (guest, #93) [Link]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. And CUPS is definitely not the only place this happens. And it is exactly the reason I have not recommended Linux to any other users besides my techie friends and co-workers.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 21:39 UTC (Thu) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link]

To quote myself in a posting to Userlinux mailing list

User Interface Target Matrix

You can split the tasks on the desktop/system into four major roles.  
 
The Four Major Roles
User   : Desktop as tools and occasional barriers to getting things done
Admin  : Providing support and maintaining the system
Builder: Collects, selects, bundles, customizes and installs/deploys.
Developer: Creates/Hacks software.

It is also possible to classify the approach people take in performing
each of the four roles.

The Four Classes of approach.
Casual   : Intermittent, Beginning, or busy/lazy users.
Everyday : General days to day users
Power    : Customize and Automate 
Guru     : In depth knowledge and command line shortcuts 

It is obvious that some people perform more than one role and can
approach each role as a differing class of approach, based upon their
knowledge and desire. It is also obvious that each has different
requirements and that attempting to force any user interface which
does not match that person's approach is going to irritate them and
become a barrier to adoption and use.

While it is possible to upskill, if its not a direct requirement of
their employment, most people consider it a hassle not worth the effort.
Microsoft's approach has been to further dumb down the builder,admin and
developer user interfaces, which irritates many everyday, power and guru
users. 

A truly successful Linux/Open Source/Free desktop environment would
continue to provide multiple *synchronized* user interfaces for each of
the four roles targeting each individual approach. 

Posted Feb 26, 2004 21:49 UTC (Thu) by trimble (guest, #5112) [Link]

Or rather than run screaming, they could just use lprng. This in the end is the real strength of an open system (competition that is).

Posted Feb 26, 2004 21:50 UTC (Thu) by jonathanbearak (guest, #8861) [Link]

Editing config files was unnecessary. The description of lack of discoverability of how to set up remote printers is a design issue with redhat-config-printer and not of CUPS. The solution is to open redhat-config-printer on the machine to which the printer is physically connected, highlight the desired printer, open the Action menu, press sharing, and check "This queue is available to other computers." It's a relatively simple task, but the option is not very visible. All that wasted time would probably have been spared had there been a "Sharing" button on the toolbar.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:00 UTC (Thu) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

I want to tell that the experience with windows is not better. I spent half a day properly configuring IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) on a windows server accessed from a windows client. And even now I don't feel completly satisfied (but how to be satisfied of something based on IIS?).
Note however that I'm not dumb to have spent that much time with my configuration, but I had some special requirements about authentication and security that were not easily met (if met at all).

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:04 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

I completely understand his frustration but he's a bit abusive. I'd also
like to point out that the broadcasting feature being turned off and the
listening address being set to localhost by default may not be the fault
of the CUPS developers but the "fault" of the distribution.

I'd also like to say that sending out periodic broadcasts is highly
annoying on a large network and is one of the reasons I don't like
Windows. Couldn't CUPS use multicast or maybe listen for a broadcast
request and only respond if they haven't received one in the last N
seconds? That way there is no traffic for uninterested computers or no
traffic when nobody is doing autoconfiguration.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:20 UTC (Thu) by shredwheat (guest, #4188) [Link]

I've been using Linux for awhile. I've found configuring printers is a monstrosity. I've still never been able to get printing working as well as it should. Even with a fairly common Epson 740, printing is hit and miss. Some things kind of work, many things don't work at all.

The problem is there are too many tools and none of them are good. You can find documentation for one tool but it doesn't quite work with another. For all the things linux can autodetect and use, printers is not one of them. Which seems strange because I've never seen Windows have problem detecting and using printers for the past decade. I thought these issues were solved?

Luckily there is a windows machine in the house. Not there's any chance of setting up remote samba printing (try, read docs, try, read docs, try, give up). It's emberrassing to transfer files and print remotely, but it works and I'll take it.

To be honest I'm on Debian, which doesn't directly come with printer tools. But I've already installed no end of foomatics and "gui helpers". You've got to know another language to even get through the odd CUPS web tool. A language it appears there is no help for.

For the love of all things, a simple HOWTO would be welcome, but nothing was available when I was searching a year or so ago.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:20 UTC (Thu) by Lemmy (guest, #19822) [Link]

Sorry, but i have to disagree a bit.

my experience with cups was more like this:


server runs cups. has a laserjet 2100m and a deskjet 895Cxi, both work
fine.

So I connect, say, my laptop running suse 9.0 via wlan. I did not
configure anything at all concerning printers... but when I try to print
from within any KDE app, I get a nice shiny print dialogue (kprinter)
showing me (besides some other options) my laserjet and my deskjet.

also, from a shell, typing lpq results in "queue DeskJet is empty".

so much for cups. or suse vs. fedora ;)

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:21 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

I agree that the CUPS system should be easier for a casual user to configure, on *all* distributions of Linux.

However, I'm glad we *have* such a powerful and useful printing system, and hope that these issues get resolved, however incrementally.

I'm seeing similar issues with ALSA as well. Sometimes I think part of the problem is the voluntary nature of all this. I keep toying with the idea of becoming a volunteer documenter, but I have such little time. I'd almost have to come up with a way to hook a computer to my brain and wirelessy work on the documentation while commuting to and from work.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:22 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I attempted to setup CUPS on my network a few months ago and ran into similar problems. I ended up going back to lpd becouse I couldn't imagine any 'features' of this 'new, simpler' system that could possibly be worth the hassle of getting it setup.

ESR is right, every developer should take the software they write and get someone who knows nothing about it and just sit and watch waht they do to try and use the software. when they get really stuck (not just stalled for a little bit, let them try for help before stepping in). the purpose of stepping in isn't to get thigns going, but to try and gather info about problems further on in the software.

the hard part of this is that after doing a few trials like this that particular user will no longer be suitable for this sort of testing (they will have learned how you do things)

those who remember the heyday of Heathkit may remember that they did this type of thing with their kits and a person who got into their testing program would only go a handful of 'Beginner' level kits before they were considered 'to experianced' to be a valid test for them and had to move up to testing the next more complicated kits. This type of testing (and fixing the issues they find) would do wonders for software useability.

and by the way I don't exempt myself from having this problem. I have been guilty of producing software that seemed perfectly obvious to run (to me) and I couldn't understand why people were having so much trouble with it until I actually saw someone trying to use it and realized that they had missed the fundamantal structure of the software.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:39 UTC (Thu) by sed_and_awk (guest, #19483) [Link]

Why knock ancient Sanskrit?
:)

Posted Feb 26, 2004 23:11 UTC (Thu) by alethia (guest, #19826) [Link]

I've been using Linux for about 2 years now. I work mostly in a windows world becasue that is what pays the bills. However, I had no problem using Mandrake 9.0 to host several HP laserjet printers in a mostly windows environment. Amazing how usful MAN is.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 23:22 UTC (Thu) by grant (guest, #10894) [Link]

Eh. This particular hair-pulling instance seems to be the same old problem of
twenty wrappers over a core text-based config interface. The web interface,
Kprinter, printtool, gnome's thing, and all the others each have different
inconsistencies, bugs, incompletenesses, etc.

The more subtle problem with printing is that printing, more so that other
ostensibly similar subsystems, involves the integration of several different
software packages. To add insult to injury, CUPS does so over one of the
more complex RFC-defined protocols around. (The IPP specs are true
*monsters*).

Furthermore, integration work is fiddley and hard, and is something that
individual free software authors suck at. Linux distributors make some effort,
but typically they assign a fraction of an engineer to the task, and produce
some distribution-proprietary ugly thing (like printtool/printerconf).

Finally, the state of printing documentation is rather poor. The Printing
HOWTO is totally obsolete. Alternative CUPS documentation is generally
verbose and poorly organized, or just verbose to the point of being useless.
Practically every other spooler has better documentation (not to suggest
that many have *good* documentation, but most are better, certainly).

I'm just glad he didn't have a *driver* snafu. The pain involved in diagnosing
driver issues is mind numbing in comparison to the minor aches one gets from
these sorts of plumbing problems.

Grant Taylor - author, Printing HOWTO and founder, linuxprinting.org.

Posted Feb 26, 2004 23:28 UTC (Thu) by macemoneta (guest, #2717) [Link]

I setup CUPS on Fedora, no problem. All my Linux systems could print just fine. However, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get my wife's work laptop (Win2K) to print to CUPS; it kept saying that the printer was not available. A few minutes of Googling found the answer (needed to define a class, not just a printer). After that, everything works. Day-to-day use of CUPS is much easier than lprng, but the setup was confusing for a Windows machine.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 1:06 UTC (Fri) by dank (guest, #1865) [Link]

I agree with ESR's verdict. I have never found CUPS anything
remotely like easy. Figuring out how to set the default printer
without the GUI from the documentation was a nightmare.

For anyone wondering, here's how:
the user's default is set in ~/.lpoptions, and the system default is set in /etc/cups/lpoptions;
the handy command "lpoptions -d printername" will *overwrite* one of
those files with new contents that set the specified default printer.
It decides which one to write based on whether you are root.
So if you need to tell people how to change their default
printer, they have to know to look at both those files
and possibly run that command twice or remove ~/.lpoptions.

This might or might not be ok (what good is lpoptions if
it overwrites all the old options?), but it sure was hell to figure out.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 1:27 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

ESR's experience is quite reminiscent of my own experiences with CUPS.
(Repeated every so often just to see if anything has improved, since CUPS
does have a lot of power.) It lures you in with friendly-looking
interfaces, but those interfaces are useless if anything goes wrong. And
with printers on a network, something always goes wrong. So then you
need to back up and go at things the unfriendly way in order to get it
working. That means that the experience gained in the initial attempt is
wasted, and you need to start over at the bottom of a different (steeper)
learning curve.

If CUPS had just said up front, "sorry, you need to deal with command
lines and /etc files in order to make this work reliably," it would be
much less frustrating. Which is why I find myself much less frustrated
by LPRng, which has no friendly-looking interfaces. At least with LPRng,
I know going in that I need to have some understanding of print
protocols, /etc/printcap, and input filters, and my experience
configuring the basic stuff prepares me for troubleshooting.

When the nearly-useless front-ends are removed, I find the underlying
command lines and /etc files in CUPS much less friendly than the
equivalents in LPRng. I do have experience with both the BSD print
system that LPRng is patterned on and the System V print system that CUPS
is patterned on, and found similar issues in those older systems.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 2:16 UTC (Fri) by eyal (subscriber, #949) [Link]

I don't know when ESR last used some of Windoze command line tools, or some of the less used GUI tools - they aren't much better than his experience with CUPS. But that's besides the point.

ESR may be right that CUPS, or a multitude of other open source tools, don't have good enough UI, documentatiion, and whatever other parts avergae end-users might need.

However, I think it's better the way it is.

I think it's better that kernel developers, CUPS developers, or for that matter developers of any infrastructure software, remain focused on producing technically best of breed solutions, and leave UI to someone else.

Looking at the Windoze analogy again, M$ licenses many pieces of software from other companies, wraps them in a UI shell and incorporates them into Windoze. Neither ESR nor aunt Tillie would ever have any complaint to the developers of those internal modules, because M$ is the front end.

It is the job of the distributions to pick and choose the pieces they deem to be best, wrap them in installation and configuration shells, provide aunt-Tillie-oriented documentation, support forums, etc.

And indeed, many of the distribution do a fine job, to the point they let average users install a powerful workstation, connect it to a local network, share files and printers with Linux and Windows machines, and do pretty much everything else.

Some people above commented about SUSE's Yast configuration tool, I have good experience with Mandrake from version 8.0 and it's getting easier and better every few months (by now it's easier than any Windows setup...). I'm sure there are many other distributions that can handle print sharing configuration easily and smoothly.

So, let it be this way. It's more efficient to have techincally minded projects remain technically minded, and let distributions do what they do best - build end-user distributions. It's not just technically more efficient, but it also creates a better market structure and provides business opportunities around Linux and free software.

Eyal.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 2:41 UTC (Fri) by rloomans (guest, #759) [Link]

If you think CUPS is hard to set up, try customising Xprint.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 3:04 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

A lot of people have said, "I use CUPS, it works great!" These people use CUPS to print small files to a local printer. They certainly don't use CUPS in a heavy-duty networked environment.

Ever clicked on the Cancel button? CUPS often gets wedged (especially if it's a big doc or going over the network). Because it never prints any error messages (just helpful web pages like "client-error-forbidden"), it gives you no clue as to what went wrong or how to fix it. *I* submitted the job, why should I be forbidden from cancelling it?? More than once I've purged all traces of CUPS from my system and reinstalled from scratch just to get my printer working again. (Simply clearing the queue and restarting CUPS doesn't do it).

I REFUSE to learn the inner workings of my print spooler. It's stupid that I have to babysit CUPS every few months. I asked about the crappy error messages three years ago, and the reply was that they were stalled on the internationalization and it should be fixed in six months. Ha.

Unfortunately, lprng also requires deep knowledge to set up and use. Printing on other platforms is trivial -- I don't know why Linux insists on making it so hard. For once, I actually agree with ESR.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 5:50 UTC (Fri) by jdl (guest, #14995) [Link]

When you get down to it what is really going on is to have a common install
program that all can use.Even if it means answering a couple of prompts. I have been using linux for a couple of years, am not a programer, but always think of myself as a newbie. I feel that the only thing that is holding linux back from going mainstream is a common install program. If a newbie has a good experience with linux, it will spread like wildfire, and we would not have to sell anyone about linux, because I know it would sell itself. I'm not a programer, or a hacker.I'm just one of many of those users out there who sees linux as a great operating system, but usually has trouble convincing someone else who has had a bad experience installing something on linux to give it another try, after they went back to windows. A majority of the programs for linux that are out there are fantastic, but a lot of people that are newbies become overwelmed with the install. Linux needs a great install program if we want to get on the desktop. I know that a lot of the companies out there have a lot of experienced people doing the installs but think of the average CEO of a company who hears a lot about linux, so he decides to load it on his own home computer to see what all the hype is about. He loads the operating system with no problem, sees a program that sounds very interesting, and sounds like something that his company could really use, but ends up giving up because the install isn't as easy as what he is use to. So what does he think about linux? Linux is a great operating system but not ready for his company yet. When someone else comes to him with the idea that we should use linux in the company, he still remembers his own experience with linux and tells the person, maybe some other time. As a person who thinks linux is great and a CEO who is sketical, it would have been much easier to sell him on linux, had he had a good experience from the getgo.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 7:13 UTC (Fri) by vatsal (guest, #19833) [Link]

When it comes to documentation and making things more intuitive, you just cant blame the FLOSS developers,

they are developing all that software because of their love for writing software, when that software is in a proper functional state(according to their expectations) they start losing interest in that(and thats natural as their first love is writing software, not documenting it), they just want to handle complex programming problems instead of firing an editor and writing about how the whole thing works.

To them "Documentation" is kind of "shitty" work which no one wants to do, and thats where money comes in picture, in closed source or professional organizations you have to write documentation, you like it or not. and often you have dedicated guys who are responsible for that, also enough thought goes into look and feel of sfotware along with core functionality of software.

I remember reading Linus statement somewhere where he said companies like RedHat did what i never wanted to do like documentation, proper intuitive GUI interfacing of software and i think that clearly conveys the point.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 7:13 UTC (Fri) by arclynx (guest, #19834) [Link]

ESR is bashing the wrong people. The tools that he use is the redhat-config-printer, developed and maintained by Red Hat and its Fedora Project. He should not directly channeled all the usability issue to the CUPS people, as CUPS should and could not control what frontend people will use to configure and connect to its servers. ESR should bash Red Hat.

Its like blaming your Sendmail, qmail or Postfix server when you want to setup your email account, where the frontend client is crappy and not user friendly.

Also, most of the time, distribution tweak the program to suit their environment but not updating the documentation that comes with the program to reflect the tweaks that they have done. CUPS should not be blamed if Fedora turns off printer discovery by default to suit their security policy. Fedora should state that in the documentation that they turn off the feature, and provide the instruction on how to turn it back on.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 9:22 UTC (Fri) by metacircles (guest, #8895) [Link]

I wonder if Eric has ever evaluated the Tk fetchmailconf utility using the same criteria. "Configurator novice controls"? It's not even /English/

I actually found it easier to configure by hand with .fetchmailrc, and that's despite the "local user floyd here is not there eieio adTHANKSvance" noiseword-enhanced syntax that serves mostly to obscure what it's actually doing.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 9:33 UTC (Fri) by kundor (guest, #14621) [Link]

Hmm. Using Mandrake's tools, I set up cups to print to either my local inkjet or the laserjet down the hill which serves half of the campus, with absolutely no effort whatsoever.
Since everything Mandrake does is GPL'd, I suggest cups just take Printdrake and make it their control gui ;)

Posted Feb 27, 2004 10:08 UTC (Fri) by dank (guest, #1865) [Link]

It seems people will apologize for anything.

CUPS may be powerful, but the documentation and interfaces are
godawful. This situation doesn't have to last long, though.
As with many packages, it has started out without much polish,
and is now hitting the real-world problems (surprising to its
developers and early adopters) that keep it from being truly ready
for adoption by the average person. All we need are more people like
ESR to raise the red flag, and more people to help polish away the
rough bits in the documentation and code.

None of this is says that CUPS is irretrievably bad.
As with the earlier poster, I keep trying it periodically
to see if it's improved to the point of being usable.

Don't blame ESR for delivering unwelcome news; take his criticisms
to heart, fix the problems, and help CUPS become more usable.
(I might if I wasn't busy scratching other itches, like
making gcc/glibc crosscompilers easy to configure and build,
or getting universities to adopt OpenOffice...)

Posted Feb 27, 2004 12:37 UTC (Fri) by mwh (guest, #582) [Link]

Hey, I just posted this to Ars Technica's forum! Let's post it here too...

I think the various rants and counter rants are slightly missing the point.

Configuration is always a major pain in the ass. It's been a long time since I've used it, but I don't recall setting up Windows networking being something you do for fun.

The goal is to not have to do configuration. Get an iBook. Select "Automatic" from the location menu. Plug the ethernet cable in. Access the 'net. That's user friendly. The crime is writing software that has to be configured before it's usable.

Unfortunately, printing is a hard area to make it go away in. Rendevous?

Posted Feb 27, 2004 13:07 UTC (Fri) by jdinardo (guest, #18775) [Link]

I have used cups under various distros and I have had problems . Now , I compile it myself, and it works perfectly for me (although I only have HP printers which are fully supported by cups).

Posted Feb 27, 2004 13:42 UTC (Fri) by simonaf (guest, #19842) [Link]

As a non-developer (status - "interested fiddler"), far be it from me to make any comment about the quality of CUPS or any other software. However, I read the article with fascination, having been through a similar situation just last night. I have a dual-boot machine "main" (W2K + Suse 9.0) with local printer, another W2K machine "shuttle" and a third running Mandrake "sonata"(my new pet), all linked to a wireless router and cable modem. "Shuttle" prints fine (so long as "main" is in Windows) but I was unable to print from "sonata", suffering some of the same CUPS problems mentioned in the article.

My point is this, though. As a relatively non-tech user, can I, and others like me, not help out in a non-tech user way with this kind of problem?

I've looked at Bugzilla pages and been frightened off! But what about some kind of non-tech AuntTillieZilla? I would just love to put my four years of Linux struggles, trials and errors (and joys when "it works!") to good use for the community and I'm sure there must be others out there like me.

Posted Feb 27, 2004 15:30 UTC (Fri) by stock (guest, #5849) [Link]

  
Dear Eric,    
    
in response to your rant on :    
    
"The Luxury of Ignorance":    
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html    
    
I only can come up with these thoughts of mind :    
   
WTF?? CUPS ? How does that work? hmm RTFM? lessee :    
    
man cupsd :    
    
SEE ALSO    
    backend(1), classes.conf(5), cupsd.conf(5), filter(1), mime.convs(5),    
    mime.types(5), printers.conf(5), CUPS Implementation of IPP, CUPS    
    Interface Design Description, CUPS Software Administrators Manual,    
    http://localhost:631/documentation.html    
    
Ohhh!!! lets open up my browser and load :    
    
http://localhost:631/    
    
Robert   

Posted Feb 27, 2004 15:55 UTC (Fri) by CardassianScot (guest, #19848) [Link]

Just to echo the comments of others that this is a Fedora issue not a cups one. When you install CUPS it does work as advertised then if you want to restrict access then you have to edit config files, Fedora developers have done this. On Mandrake Linux, you setup a printer on machine and then it seen by all computers on the that subdomain as advertised. No fiddling with any kind of config, web based or editing a file.

Of course sometimes there is an error and things go wrong and you can't see a network printer but a simple reboot clears them up. This is simple easy to use and what a windows user can cope with. (Of course being Linux I'm sure that a reboot is strictly speaking not neccessary, but the fact is that it works and for non-Gurus this is fine and what they expect).

Posted Feb 28, 2004 4:05 UTC (Sat) by neoprene (guest, #8520) [Link]

I've tried a few distros and had various degress of of "Luck" configuring printers.

I insist on using USB stuff which get auto-recognized except for printers and scanners [and whatever else]. As the USB stuff gets auto-recognized the drivers don't get configured and loaded, why the hell not?

Do I want to use the "Epson Stylus CX5200 Foomatic/gimp-print-ijs" or some of the other printer drivers? Why not load one automagically ande give an option to change it? Does it have to be this frikken difficult?

Some GUI's are good but are no help because they don't provide any guidance, including the RedHat "printtool". KDEprint [printing manager] is a little better but it has pitfalls. [WTF is "class" of printer and "pseudo printer" ? Do I really need to know this?]

Some GUI's can be helpful with their "wizards". I can think of "Firestarter" and "DVD::RIP" as being guiding and helpful. "Printtool" is of little help.

And lets not get started on editing screen-rez and refresh-rates. [don't look for a GUI-slider].

Most things on in the PC world gets done w/o poring over half-cooked "readme's" and "man" pages without concrete examples and 59 command switches.

Unless average Joe 6pack can use a program what good is it?

Posted Feb 29, 2004 2:28 UTC (Sun) by lvteacher (guest, #14548) [Link]

Unfortunately, for me, I had to use Windows 98 for may tax preparation. It took 3 reboots to
install the printer drivers.

I hate to disagree with Mr. raymond, but Windows is definitely not easier.

lvteacher

Posted Feb 29, 2004 18:37 UTC (Sun) by ice (guest, #19875) [Link]

i completely disagree. cups is such a great, flexible and
easy-to-configure and -manage system. what good could that gui-stuff do
if one's literate enough to read a text file and change some lines in it?
if configuring cups is too much hassle for a person well i suggest this
person get a copy of windoze XP, an hp printer an hp jet admin or sth
similar. this combination will do anything this person wants even before
this person even knows what it is she/he might want.
in these times of ever-growing complexity and extremely specialist
knowledge of almost anything in this world i am terrified by an attitude
that demands that computers MUST be the sole island in the middle of all
this complexity where anything MUST work after one click and without any
knowledge of the inner workings of this extremely sophisticated and
complex system. computers by themselves ARE NOT SIMPLE and ARE NOT EASY
TO USE - what might be are the veils other persons cover them with. today
there's systems that are very "easy" to configure, but may be less
flexible, and there's systems harder to configure, but may be more
flexible. if one likes more flexibilty, this person needs more
information, and i think this person must somehow get this information
BEFORE starting to work on the actual problem.

i used to teach a part in sysadmin-classes and was amazed at how (usually
after having absolved the first - usually windoze - parts of the course)
knowledge-free and self-assured the students there started working on a
complex problem: they blindly relied on some "wizards" and were convinced
ANYTHING could be done "intuitively:" "i don't know sh00t about DNS or
whatever a zone is, but surely SOMEWHERE i gotta click the right
mouse-button and it will work...."
not that i want to accuse esr of ANY of this, but my experience with cups
was just the opposite and i think the people of cups and
linuxprinting.org deserve a lot of BIG FAT THANK YOUs.
i had to setup a couple of network printers on with a centralized
printserver in a heterogenous network. took some reading and thinking and
of course i got in moods similar to esr's on the way, but now i know a
little bit about cups and the next setup will be much quicker and easier.
and even though personally i can work better with textconfigs, the webgui
of cups is really cool i think.

Posted Mar 2, 2004 2:37 UTC (Tue) by melauer (guest, #2438) [Link]

I understand and agree with ESR's general comments about UIs in Linux. I
do hope, though, that his specific comments about changing CUPS and
redhat-config-printers are taken with a grain of salt by the developers.

I am particularly concerned about the part in which Mr. Raymond argues
that "In order for the nice, user-friendly autoconfiguration stuff [for
CUPS] to work, you have to first edit an /etc file." He is referring to
auto-detecting a printer which is connected to another computer. For
auto-detection to "just" work, the firewall on the computer which is
connected to the printer must allow packets in to the CUPS server on port
631. By default. Yes, he's suggesting that printer sharing should be
made accessible to the world by default. Didn't we used to make fun of
MS for doing this sort of thing?

See, despite the claim that "[His] configuration problem is simple.", it
isn't. Mr. Raymond is not trying to simply connect a printer to a
computer (apparently he did this already, successfully, with the system
called "minx"). Nor is he trying to do the next most complicated thing:
connecting to a printer which is attached to a dedicated print server or
which is network capable by itself. In such situations, the
documentation for the printer or print server will instruct the user how
to proceed (yes, in my experience, even for CUPS on Linux). No, he's
trying to do something which my Aunt Tillie would never have thought of
(assuming that she even owned two computers): using one system as a print
server for the other. Whenever you see the word "server" in the
description of a task I would hope that the "security" warning light goes
off in your head. Making it possible for users to set up servers
_safely_ should be the goal. That pretty much rules out
auto-configuration. Combining security and flexibility is hard. Really,
really hard. And yes, getting things right does require work such as
"reading the documentation". Reading documentation which has been moved
into the UI, e.g. in a help file or a series of context-sensitive text
windows, still counts as reading the documentation.

Programmers might like to believe that they can do anything with their
code, but that CUPS server is never going to be auto-detected while it's
behind a firewall. Computers will never be so simple that the end-user
doesn't have to think. If they don't have to think about one thing
(function) then they have to think about another (security? stability?
performance?) To whichever Fedora developer is looking into this
problem: please don't forget that! Design better UIs, but don't make
Aunt Tillie think that she's doing something safe just because the UI led
her through the whole process so smoothly.

Posted Mar 7, 2004 16:13 UTC (Sun) by nkoozer (guest, #5553) [Link]

To ESR: Thank You, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.