[Printing-summit] [lsb-discuss] Printer/driver testingandcertification

[Klaus Singvogel]

George Liu wrote:
> [George Liu] 
> I agree with Till that foomatic-rip should be included in LSB standard. 
> (Unless it is targeting distributions like RHEL3 or older)
> 
> Right now, Foomatic-rip has become a standard part of all major Linux
> distributions and Solaris 10. All 700+ PPD files (including Postscript
> PPDs) Ricoh releases to LP.org *REQUIRES* Foomatic-rip. Only with the
> help of Foomatic-rip, secure print features like LockedPrint, UserCode
> can be provided to end user.

Interesting fact that Ricoh printers cannot print without foomatic-rip
under Linux. I never was aware this. But neverless there are printers
of others vendor which can print without having foomatic-rip installed
in the system. For proofing you can do:

- grep -iL foomatic-rip foomatic-db/db/source/PPD/*/*/*.ppd |wc -l
  reports: 617 files (PPD files not containing foomatic-rip)

whereas:
- grep -il foomatic-rip foomatic-db/db/source/PPD/*/*/*.ppd | wc -l
  reports: 604 files (PPD files containing foomatic-rip)

...and don't forget those Linux installations, which are only running
to print raw data in the company (i.e. printing data comes from a
Windows client).

> Those PPD files and secure print features will even work on non-CUPS
> system like Solaris 10, thanks for Foomatic-rip. 

True. But are we talking about Linux or about standards for Sun/Solaris
systems? :-)

Just to point my opinion out: I'm also glad that foomatic-rip exists.
It's a great tool. But I still vote for handling foomatic-rip as a
tool, which should only marked as a _should_ be present in a LSB
compliant system, but not as a _must_ have.

Regards,
	Klaus.
-- 
Klaus Singvogel
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH
Maxfeldstr. 5                     E-Mail: Klaus.Singvogel at SuSE.de
90409 Nuernberg                   Phone: +49 (0) 911 740530
Germany                           GnuPG-Key-ID: 1024R/5068792D  1994-06-27