Another piece of printing code that might be missing on KDE4...

Over at the CUPS mailing lists/forums, an ongoing discussion thrashes out some changes that will affect the future of Linux desktop printing. One point is about the "Foomatic" drivers. This driver family is not "native" to CUPS -- Foomatic is a clever trick to plug Ghostscript as an add-on into the CUPS filtering system. So the question was, how could they blend into CUPS in a more harmoneous way? What could be done to not cause so many support calls for Easy Software Products complaining about Foomatic drivers, which they don't develop, and don't offer support for? (ESP is the company of Mike Sweet, the main CUPS author).

These calls typically come in to ESP from customers because the Foomatic database does put for some drivers the keyword "(Recommended)" into the user's face when he installs a printer. However, these "recommended" drivers do not work fully for example for Windows clients when printing to a Samba/CUPS print server.

Now Mike has now drafted a document "RFC: New Driver Rating/Information Attributes" and asks for comments.

Whatever the outcome of that discussion will be: there are going to come quite some changes in the way CUPS and Foomatic will transport printer driver information to the user who is tasked with installing a printer.

It means we need someone in KDE to write some new (KDE4?) code for this: parsing the PPD (or the output of a "cupsGetPPDs" call), and translating this into a pleasant and usable GUI interface for our users.

Currently there is nobody in sight.

If this remains the case, KDE4 will be falling behind the competition when it comes to printing -- after leading the pack all these years on this field...