Re: [tlug] Grateful

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Nick Bikkal writes:

 > part I'm ok. The printer driver doesn't seem to work.I had the problem 
 > with earlier versions of Linux. Maybe Canon just doesn't cooperate!?

Of the Japanese printer makers, the only one I've ever heard praised
for their Linux compatibility is Brother.  EPSON's open source driver
is OK for print quality, but software quality sucks and since it's for
CUPS, if you have any problems, debugging is a big hairy ball of.

Canon indeed doesn't cooperate; Gutenprint and friends generally don't
have PPDs for their most recent models (AFAIK Canon has never supplied
them), and PPDs for the proprietary drivers (eg, Mac) often don't work
with the open source drivers.

I really don't understand why they don't publish the APIs any more.
It's not like the quality of manufacturer-supplied printer driver
software (as software) is anything but poor, and they don't get
revenue directly from their driver software.