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

[George Liu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Klaus Singvogel [mailto:kssingvo at suse.de]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 11:24 AM
> To: George Liu
> Cc: Till Kamppeter; Steve Schafer; lsb-discuss; Stark, Jens; Wichmann,
> Mats D; printing-summit at lists.freestandards.org
> Subject: Re: [Printing-summit] [lsb-discuss] Printer/driver
> testingandcertification
> 
> 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.
[George Liu] 
Maybe I'm wrong, but here's my understanding for LSB certification:

Let's say CUPS, Foomatic-rip and Ghostscript are required components for
LSB 4.0 (I know LSB should only specify API but not modules, just make
it simple).
1. SUSE 9 and above satisfies that requirement, so they're LSB 4.0
certified. 
2. All Ricoh printers will work on a CUPS + Foomatic-rip + Ghostscript
system, so they're also LSB 4.0 certified. 
We can advertise to end user that Ricoh printer drivers will work on any
LSB 4.0 certified Linux distributions. 

On the other hand, RHEL 3 doesn't have Foomatic-rip, so we can only say
it's  LSB 3.1 certified, and LSB 4.0 certified Ricoh printer drivers are
not guaranteed to work on it.


> 
> 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