[Desktop_architects] raw notes from drivers 12/01/2005 meeting

[Norm Jacobs]

Till Kamppeter wrote:

>Norm Jacobs wrote:
>  
>
>>I agree, matching the 1284 device IDs is probably the most accurate
>>means of
>>matching PPD files to printers for USB and parallel printers.  I noticed
>>that one
>>of my network attached printers seems to supply the 1284 device ID as
>>part of
>>it's response to IPP get-printer-attributes query.  I suspect that there
>>are others
>>that do the same thing and that it's also available through a number of
>>other
>>methods.  Using the printer make/model information from the PPD files
>>doesn't
>>work as well as you might like, but in absence of a 1284 device ID, it
>>supplies
>>a means of making a somewhat educated guess.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Do you know standard methods to poll the IEEE1284 device ID from
>printers hooked up on the network (SNMP, LPD, TCP/Socket, SMB, IPP,
>...)? Can one also poll the queue name for LPD and the dir name for IPP?
>
>Are the device IDs always the same for the same printer, independent of
>being hooked up via USB, parallel, or network?
>  
>
There doesn't appear to be an OID for the 1284 device id to use with
SNMP, but the 1284 Manufacturer and Model are represented in what
appears to be standard OIDs and they appear to be the same value as
1284 MFG/MDL values, so they can be used for matching.

LPD protocol just has nothing like this.  It has two query operations,
neither of which returns a standard format.  It happens that most systems
return very similiar results, but some do vary widely.

I have been wondering about SMB.  I was thinking of looking into modifying
smbspool to support a "-q" query option to return what information it 
can about
the printer/queue from the SMB server  I just haven't had the time to 
figure out
what it can get.

Unfortunately, IPP doesn't currently have a standard attribute for this, 
but I
had a short discussion about it with Ira MacDonald a few weeks ago and he
thought it might be a good idea, if I was willing to author the proposed 
addition
with him.  The current IPP printer attributes that closely resemble the 1284
information are printer-name, printer-make-and-model, printer-info, but they
vary as to which match up and how well they do.

I believe that some printer's SLP implementations provide this information
as well.  They may also supply an appropriate IPP uri.

Yet another promissing alternative is mDNS.  In the case of Apple's Bonjour
printing spec, specifies a RR for the IPP uri and the 1284 device id MFG/MDL

Since query seems to be transport dependent (and in some cases manufacturer
dependent), I have been thinking of supporting a standard "query" option for
the various backend modules on Solaris, and I'm sure that CUPS could do this
as well. This would probe a device for information about make/model/... and
return it to the caller. It would be useful when the user supplies the 
device-uri,
but ideally local and network hot-plug support would already supply this 
information
when the device is noticed.

       -Norm