Printing Trends in Linux (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 21, 2007 1:13 UTC (Fri) by gtaylor6 (guest, #19812)
In reply to: Printing Trends in Linux (O'ReillyNet) by jwb
Parent article: Printing Trends in Linux (O'ReillyNet)

I dunno about the LSB being all bad; there are certain areas where non-free binary software is the norm, and areas where that's entirely reasonable. But I would certainly agree that drivers isn't one of those areas. Unfortunately there is implicit in all this packaging talk a goal of making binary printer drivers feasible, even as (for example) the Linux kernel folks discourage binary kernel drivers with ever more vigor each passing year.

OTOH, I would argue that your notions about printer interfaces are a bit simplistic. For many, perhaps even most, categories of printer, there are approximately zero products with on-board RIP using ie ps or pdf. In practice this includes more or less all "home" printers, the vast majority of small "desktop" printers for any market, and again the majority of special purpose printers like label, card, kiosk, receipt, disc, or photo devices. Many RIP-free printers are further hobbled by sporting a partly or entirely undocumeted control language.

For now the best course is probably to give LF and Till the benefit of the doubt and see what comes of it. The practical disadvantages of nonfree drivers will be in no way mitigated by any LSB distribution infrastructure; nonfree printer drivers will continue to fail prematurely and generally be a PITA regardless. My only objection will be if any plan surfaces to turn the Foomatic database into a distribution vector for non-free software. This would be quite a turnaround from my original intent, and IMHO a long-term disservice to free software users.

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Grant Taylor

Printing Trends in Linux (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 21, 2007 4:16 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

I'm not trying to be simplistic and require everybody to have a postscript rip in their printer. Indeed, postscript may not even expose the best features of the print engine. I only expect my printers to have some kind of open, documented control language. I plug my Lexmark postscript printer into my Linux machine and it works flawlessly. I plug my Epson CX5400 into my Linux machine and it works perfectly. The latter is, by the way, not true with Windows. So I guess you'll have to excuse me if I'm not seeing the big emergency that requires us to adopt an infrastructure for the distribution of binary print drivers. As far as I can tell, getting a printer that works with the existing infrastructure is a matter of smart shopping.