Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Posted Sep 12, 2019 12:21 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)In reply to: Topics from the Open Printing microconference by mads
Parent article: Topics from the Open Printing microconference
In defence of the "IPP everywhere" folks, practically every "traditional home or office" printer sold in the last five years is network enabled and supports IPP. The higher-end has supported network printing via PDF or whatnot for even longer.
But you're also right, "Deprecation of PPD files" is actually an euphemism for "We intend to drop support for everything that's not a remote IPP printer, making CUPS into just an IPP print client" (And note that all IPP printers are "remote" in this context)
So any locally-attached printers will require a new "Native IPP driver" written for that printer in order to continue operating. Which is pretty hilarious, given that the current "deprecated" CUPS+PPD model already makes these printers IPP-enabled, and that a true "native IPP driver" will require re-implementing 3/4ths of this "deprecated" CUPS functionality. (ie the entire IPP stack, job spooling, user authentication/management, bidirectionally mapping printer features to PPD^H^H^HIPP attributes, printer status reporting, daemonization, process control, logging, etc etc etc..)
That said, the space I operate in (high end, commercial-use [1] printers) rarely has anything network-enabled, and when it is, it's just an alternative transport for the same protocol spoken over USB, inevitably tied to some kind of proprietary "app" or SDK. Meanwhile, the current trend is to actually make these specialized printers _dumber_ by offloading more processing onto the host.
So yeah, this "IPP or bust" model is great for random consumer of office-type printing, but not only does it ignore the use cases of more specialized or commercial niches that the "deprecated" CUPS model serves quite effectively (even only if just as a raw spooler) it also tells those users that they're going to be kicked overboard without so much as a proverbial life raft.
[1] Printers used to make money; eg dyesub printers routinely found in photobooths or drugstore kiosks, thermal printers in ultrasound workstations, receipt printers, or inkjets that have highly specialized inksets for printing on different media, including PCBs, wide-format outdoor signage or direct-to-garment printing.. these things have lifecycles that routinely exceed a decade, and place strong emphasis on backwards compatibility with older models. Because rewriting working software is _expensive_
Posted Sep 13, 2019 16:16 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (6 responses)
They'll keep at it as long as no competitor makes the switch. If they manage to procrastinate long enough, and customers get fed up enough with the aggravation, there will be the usual extinction event when a fixed product appears, and market dries up for anything else.
Posted Sep 13, 2019 17:30 UTC (Fri)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (3 responses)
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to improve the general status quo, or improve the user experience for the common 98% -- But we have to keep in mind that we shouldn't actively preclude the remaining 2% from being able to do what they need -- because for that 2%, printing is not just a convenience, or a even necessary evil -- Instead, it is the entire point of their business.
(Just one of those "niche" verticals (photo kiosks) represents a $1.5 billion worldwide market, made of mostly of pretty small players. Those are my users; the actual equipment manufacturers tend to be more of a hinderance than anything else..)
Posted Sep 16, 2019 8:48 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (2 responses)
However, from a technical progress POW, those manufacturers definitely do not matter. They're the last 5% of the adoption curve, the very conservative minority that does not want to invest any effort into changing, and would rather invest twice the amount of time, money, and energy, into making the past live a little longer, than take the risk of building their bit of the future. (I actually work in such a company so I know the mindset very well).
They will build up technical stress by resisting change, till it reaches the rupture point, and then brutally realign with the rest on the market in a destructive earthquake.
I'm sure the cups maintainers would love to design with them a future that addressed their use cases, except there is no one to work with. By the time those companies will be interested in looking at the problems the design will have been done with others.
Posted Sep 16, 2019 12:26 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Those manufacturers, for the most part, have always used "printing applications" as their primary target. Invariably in the form of a Windows DLL that requires end-user applications to explicitly code against. Some of the more progressive makers provided a Linux .so equivalent. So all of this CUPS/IPP stuff is completely irrelevant to them and their target markets.
Ironically, it's the F/OSS advocates that are getting screwed here; the ones who reverse-engineered these printers to write F/OSS CUPS drivers so they could use their own hardware and print without a Windows license. The system integrators who built their solutions on F/OSS platforms that use standardized discovery/configuration/queueing/printing APIs (ie "legacy CUPS") to break vendor lock-in and enable non-WinTel embedded platforms.
The most likely outcome here is that CUPS will get forked (most likely by the OpenPrinting folks) and all of the things that CUPS dropped support for over the years (because they only matter to organizations-not-named-Apple) will get re-integrated.
I consider this a GoodThing, and OpenPrinting has repeatedly shown themselves to be competent stewards.
Posted Sep 16, 2019 13:15 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
One other thing -- For the most part, native IPP support is never going to happen on most of those niche verticals, because it will require a substantial increase in hardware BOM and a non-trivial NRE investment, and in return they will get a system that is slower, less flexible, and still requires a host system to run arbitrary user applications.
What's actually happening in this market is that the printers are remaining relatively dumb, but for users that care about network printing features, most of the manufacturers sell a bolt-on "print server" box that can drive several attached printers. Those little "print server" boxes are all running.. wait for it.. Linux, CUPS, and that "deprecated" F/OSS driver stack, resulting in a fully functional IPP printer that JustWorks(tm). Well, with everything but Apple Airprint clients, because AirPrint isn't quite IPP compatible.
IPP doesn't magically eliminate the need for a driver to be written; it just pushes it from the client-side to the server.
But right now, even for folks that want to do the right Future Proofed thing, the most functional "IPP printer driver framework" is actually Legacy CUPS. By a wide, wide margin.
Posted Sep 20, 2019 20:37 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
This is the same problem as when Bill Gates told manufacturers to drop RS-232 ports from PCs, and various END USERS complained. BG's response was "well buy new peripherals then!". When the end user has 10 peripherals at $1/4M *each*!
It's not the manufacturers stalling, it's end users not wanting to write off a LARGE investment just because somebody else wants to make a fast buck.
Cheers,
Posted Sep 20, 2019 20:55 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Second, USB-to-Serial converters have been available since 1997.
Third, if USB-to-Serial is insufficient for some obscure reason (timing, etc.), fully compliant RS-232 PCI cards are widely available to this day. They're selling for $20 or so.
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Topics from the Open Printing microconference
Wol
Topics from the Open Printing microconference