On 16 July 2014 15:19, Rodney Baker <rodney.baker@iinet.net.au> wrote:
for the reasons *why* new newest official version is 1.5.4. Basically, our CUPS Apple overlords removed many of the non-OS-X features from CUPS core distribution that Linux depended on.
Thanks, Joachim. Hmmm - Ken's idea starts to sound like good one. Sounds like the Common UNIX Printing System is not so common any more...
It's a complicated situation, so far the OpenPrinting group managed to come up with solutions for all the bits Apple is removing, but eventually they will remove stuff we can't replace. Apple obviously have an interest in new features in CUPS, and as they control the entire OS and wrap CUPS in their own API they are free to dump stuff they no longer need. They also don't backport bug fixes much to earlier versions that distros still use. Linux distros however have to be concerned about legacy support, etc. For example, the widely used Qt4 toolkit only supports CUPS 1.2 and is feature frozen so cannot be upgraded to the new CUPS 1.6 way of doing things. They found a way around that (browserd) but that solution took a while to materialise and missed the openSUSE 13.1 window. Longer term, Red Hat does have a contingency plan for the day when Apple does something that cannot be worked around, but trying to maintain a separate print system with support for tens of thousands of printers is hard work, and sharing that system with Apple at least ensures hardware manufactures take more of an interest in writing drivers. The future is with driverless printing using IPP, but it will be years before everyone has a printer capable of that so we need the legacy support. Basically the plan is to replace the print spooler with something modern, but keep the CUPS hardware backend. Ideally the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative would spend some money on LTS for older Cups versions and pay towards any future new spooler, but don't hold your breath, printing is decidedly non-sexy and struggles to attract funding or attention. John. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org