Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 25, 2006 02:43 AM
Hear! hear!
IMHO, CUPS is an atrocity. The end-user configuration is nearly impossible to comprehend. There's no explanation in the config tools to help explain what the various options are even for so you have little to no clue which one too choose.
I have a workstation which I successfully (after taking way too much time, BTW; driver issue mainly) got a locally-connected photo printer to work. Then it was time to configure a connection to the B/W laser printer downstairs which was to be the default printer for this system. The CUPS configuration tool couldn't seem to comprehend such a setup. It was almost as though, having set up the first printer, CUPS was of the attitude "How many printers do you need, pal?" Nevertheless, I decide to add another printer and am faced with the question "Do I want to create a new queue?" Seemed reasonable to me. Until following that path eventually resulted in an announcement that this would blow away existing printer configurations. Trying a different tack, I was presented with a radio-button menu of a dozen or so different printer communication protocols that I should select from. Hardly user-friendly even to someone like myself that's been setting up network printers on UNIX systems for the better part of twenty years.
I have to agree with you, the CUPS project needs (and badly) to clean up their software to make it easier to use before jumping on to the next "gee whiz this is cool and fun to work on" glitzy feature that leave most users wondering why they still can't get a printer set up on their Linux network. But, instead of fixing this glaring deficiency in CUPS, the developers and their fans get all defensive and fire back that you should RTFM. Now that not a bad idea if, of course, there was an FM to read that actually helped. Since the major distributions are adopting CUPS as the standard printing system -- to the extent that they've largely omitted LPD and LPRng off their CDs and if they're still present, they clash with other tools that have been made dependent on CUPS -- this junk has got to be made to work more smoothly. And it's got to be configurable by someone who doesn't have CVS check-in access to the CUPS project.
And PDF as a printer format? Yah. That'll work just ducky. Imagine all the filters that are going to have to work perfectly in conjunction with one another for this to produce uncorrupted output. (I especially like the fact the CUPS insists on passing Postscript through some sort of PS-to-PS filter before printing to a printer that accepts Psotscript natively. The need for that filter isn't in any CUPS documentation that I've run across.)
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Re:Congratulations
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 25, 2006 02:43 AMHear! hear!
IMHO, CUPS is an atrocity. The end-user configuration is nearly impossible to comprehend. There's no explanation in the config tools to help explain what the various options are even for so you have little to no clue which one too choose.
I have a workstation which I successfully (after taking way too much time, BTW; driver issue mainly) got a locally-connected photo printer to work. Then it was time to configure a connection to the B/W laser printer downstairs which was to be the default printer for this system. The CUPS configuration tool couldn't seem to comprehend such a setup. It was almost as though, having set up the first printer, CUPS was of the attitude "How many printers do you need, pal?" Nevertheless, I decide to add another printer and am faced with the question "Do I want to create a new queue?" Seemed reasonable to me. Until following that path eventually resulted in an announcement that this would blow away existing printer configurations. Trying a different tack, I was presented with a radio-button menu of a dozen or so different printer communication protocols that I should select from. Hardly user-friendly even to someone like myself that's been setting up network printers on UNIX systems for the better part of twenty years.
I have to agree with you, the CUPS project needs (and badly) to clean up their software to make it easier to use before jumping on to the next "gee whiz this is cool and fun to work on" glitzy feature that leave most users wondering why they still can't get a printer set up on their Linux network. But, instead of fixing this glaring deficiency in CUPS, the developers and their fans get all defensive and fire back that you should RTFM. Now that not a bad idea if, of course, there was an FM to read that actually helped. Since the major distributions are adopting CUPS as the standard printing system -- to the extent that they've largely omitted LPD and LPRng off their CDs and if they're still present, they clash with other tools that have been made dependent on CUPS -- this junk has got to be made to work more smoothly. And it's got to be configurable by someone who doesn't have CVS check-in access to the CUPS project.
And PDF as a printer format? Yah. That'll work just ducky. Imagine all the filters that are going to have to work perfectly in conjunction with one another for this to produce uncorrupted output. (I especially like the fact the CUPS insists on passing Postscript through some sort of PS-to-PS filter before printing to a printer that accepts Psotscript natively. The need for that filter isn't in any CUPS documentation that I've run across.)
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