Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 4, 2021 20:46 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future by dullfire
Parent article: Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

> Hmmm. Feels kind of like the current community is somewhat hostile towards people who can not, or do not want to put their printers on the network.

FWIW, "localhost" is "on the network" and is how already CUPS operates today.

User applications don't talk directly to the printer, they talk to the local CUPS instance or invoke helpers that do so. (eg lp/lpr) So this new paradigm isn't any different.

Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 5, 2021 3:31 UTC (Sat) by dullfire (guest, #111432) [Link] (4 responses)

*sigh* I would have hoped it was self evident that you computer (or at least that's what I assume you mean by "localhost", since from a correctly configured printers perspective "localhost" is itself) is not in fact the printer.

In case it was in any way unclear: by "put their printers on the network" I meant "plug the printer into an RJ-45 jack, or give it access to wifi, or plug in a fiber line, or any upl-ink that is typically connected to multiple systems, and not just one machine." I would have thought that was self-evident, especially considering that the article is about requiring printers use IPP (which I'm pretty sure won't work over raw usb, it would probably have to be encapsulated in some transport that supports IP first). However maybe that's just my perspective, and host actually shared by other people.

PS. claiming "localhost" is on the network is kind of a pointless thing. Maybe next we should say "lo is the only interface needed to be networked".

Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 5, 2021 7:44 UTC (Sat) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #71063) [Link]

You might want to check out gnoutchd's comment about ipp-usb

Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 5, 2021 18:29 UTC (Sat) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link]

I feel like this comment misses the point of the previous one.

Using network software and concepts is, for a locally connected printer, an implementation detail.

IPP uses network services as an implementation detail, even for USB connected printers, but it does not require “network access” in the sense of any of this being visible beyond the printer and the machine it’s connected to.

Think of it as IPP over USB. It’s using IP. And it’s using *a* network (sort of, in the sense that the endpoints are using networking protocols to communicate), but there’s no need for it to be on *your network*.

So this is a way to use IPP everywhere rather than having a custom USB solution. And unless your objection is literally to the use of IP protocols, this seems fine.

Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 7, 2021 16:49 UTC (Mon) by gnoutchd (guest, #121472) [Link] (1 responses)

No, pizza understood you perfectly. "On the network" in this case means "reachable by code that knows how to open an AF_INET socket". There's no reason that can't be a local USB-connected printer as long as you have a driver that binds to a port on localhost and speaks the same protocol that a network printer would speak. ipp-usb is exactly that for any printer that supports IPP-over-USB, a standard widely implemented by modern printers. It's installed and enabled out-of-the-box by current or upcoming distro releases.

Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future

Posted Jun 7, 2021 20:55 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> PS. claiming "localhost" is on the network is kind of a pointless thing.

localhost is the special "network" with a single host and it's not "pointless": high-level printing protocols (just like most TCP/IP protocols) don't want to know which particular networks your printer is connected to. It's much simpler when "everything is a network" and networking implementation details and choices stay private to you.