Re: [tlug] centos5 printing -- solved -- driver news

["Gernot Hassenpflug" <aikishugyo@example.com>]

> Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:56:56 +0900
> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
> Subject: Re: [tlug] centos5 printing -- solved -- driver news
> To: Tokyo Linux Users Group <tlug@example.com>
> Message-ID: <87odjic4cn.fsf@example.com>
>
> But finding drivers is generally not a problem; Gutenprint and CUPS
> provide a very wide variety.  The problem is that Canon and Epson
> don't get open source, so their drivers are often unusable, and the
> specs are not easily available to developers so that the drivers can
> only be improved by specialists.  Eg, the Canon MP500 PPD distributed
> with Mac OS X is about 350KB, most of it is opaque (BASE64-encoded),
> and it hard-codes a lot of internal Mac OS X paths in /Library and
> /System, so you can't just drop it in on a Linux installation.  By
> comparison, the Gutenprint version is 35KB, but it can't print the
> CUPS test page correctly.

Gah!

> This isn't going to change.

Indeed. I discovered I should prefer Epson over Canon because Epson
printers are dumber (!) and therefore more open as they apparently
have less IP to protect (from Gutenprint developer's manual). I wonder
if anyone would be able to find funding for a project to develop an
OpenPrinterEngine, much like the OpenGraphics project or the OpenBIOS
project. One inkjet, one laser version, using ghostscript-type
processing, not the pinnacle of excellence but solid quality and
robustness... sort of like the IBM PC clone.
--
Gernot Hassenpflug