Cups will drop driver support?

joekamprad · August 30, 2020, 7:40pm

CUPS printer drivers and backends are deprecated and will no longer be supported in a future feature release of CUPS. Printers that do not support IPP can be supported using applications such as ippeveprinter.

github.com/apple/cups

FUTURE: Remove printer driver and raw queue support.

opened 10:44PM - 19 Mar 18 UTC

closed 08:52PM - 12 Mar 21 UTC

michaelrsweet

enhancement

> Note: The goal of this issue is to have a place to discuss the eventual remova…l of printer driver > support and support for raw queues. This bug has not been scheduled for a specific release > milestone and this is not something we will implement immediately. Because most printer drivers > exist outside of CUPS this change needs to be discussed publicly. Why do we want to do this? - Raw queues used for special-use printers require custom applications that know about printer capabilities and how to produce printer-ready (document) data. Using CUPS is a convenience, but plenty of applications talk directly to printers (think Point of Sale systems) - Raw queues used for shared printers require client software to talk directly to the server to get the printer capabilities, which breaks when sandboxing/AppArmor/SELinux is used - Almost every printer manufactured since 2010 supports IPP/2.0 with standard file formats - Holdouts are industrial label printers and certain vertical market printers - PPDs and drivers have been holding us back from offering better user experience (ready media, localization, full range of printer options/values), improved document processing, and improved accounting - PPDs and drivers are a security and distribution nightmare We already have a replacement for raw queues for shared printers (local/temporary queues managed by cupsd), and raw queues for special-use printers already largely bypass CUPS and can use existing commands or character device files to communicate with those printers. As for printer drivers, those few printers that "need" them could migrate to standalone applications/services using the CUPS API to provide an IPP Everywhere-compatible Printer instance, and both the one-file ippserver sample code and the larger implementation in the [PWG IPP Sample code repository](https://github.com/istopwg/ippsample) show this is feasible, even for existing CUPS-based drivers. And as an advantage of this approach drivers like Gutenprint will no longer be shackled by the limitations of PPD files.

o.k. we have 2020 now but i would like to see that printing just works … without searching for drivers…

keybreak · August 30, 2020, 8:33pm

Jeez…
So that super-duper news means that any old printer can go to hell?

BONK · August 30, 2020, 8:34pm

Neo why do you need paper?

keybreak · August 30, 2020, 8:35pm

Well i don’t know…
Forge documents with my old printer or something, you should know better Morpheus

joekamprad · August 30, 2020, 9:57pm

whats about my good old Dot Matrix printer?

freebird54 · August 30, 2020, 11:14pm

Gee - I don’t know… When I had one of these, I also had the super-duper addon cartidge for the C64 that allowed italic, underline, bold, and miltiple fonts including script!