Comments on: Unhooking the foomatic parser http://cyberelk.net/tim/2007/06/08/unhooking-the-foomatic-parser/ Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:34:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: tim http://cyberelk.net/tim/2007/06/08/unhooking-the-foomatic-parser/#comment-267 tim Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:55:16 +0000 http://cyberelk.net/tim/2007/06/08/unhooking-the-foomatic-parser/#comment-267 Not really. Yes, we can remove the dependency on foomatic in the system-config-printer package, but we would still want the foomatic package installed by default for the wide range of devices it can supply PPDs for. In other words, you can avoid installing foomatic, but you won't get nearly so many PPDs in that case. Foomatic provides a CUPS driver script, <tt>/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic</tt>, which CUPS uses to fetch a list of PPDs when it needs it (on demand). So listing the available PPDs with "lpinfo -m" shows the PPDs that foomatic is capable of generating in addition to the PPDs that CUPS already has. We had been parsing the foomatic database in addition to this (meaning that it got parsed twice, actually), but unhooking our own parser means that we can make system-config-printer a "pure" CUPS configuration program, and that brings with it some benefits. Most notably, the "recommended driver" can now potentially include CUPS drivers, or PPDs from manufacturers, whereas before it was always the foomatic driver. It also means that hal-cups-utils will be able to choose the best available PPD for a given device, without being restricted to foomatic PPDs (as it is in F-7). Not really. Yes, we can remove the dependency on foomatic in the system-config-printer package, but we would still want the foomatic package installed by default for the wide range of devices it can supply PPDs for. In other words, you can avoid installing foomatic, but you won’t get nearly so many PPDs in that case.

Foomatic provides a CUPS driver script, /usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic, which CUPS uses to fetch a list of PPDs when it needs it (on demand). So listing the available PPDs with “lpinfo -m” shows the PPDs that foomatic is capable of generating in addition to the PPDs that CUPS already has.

We had been parsing the foomatic database in addition to this (meaning that it got parsed twice, actually), but unhooking our own parser means that we can make system-config-printer a “pure” CUPS configuration program, and that brings with it some benefits. Most notably, the “recommended driver” can now potentially include CUPS drivers, or PPDs from manufacturers, whereas before it was always the foomatic driver.

It also means that hal-cups-utils will be able to choose the best available PPD for a given device, without being restricted to foomatic PPDs (as it is in F-7).

]]> By: Jeremy Katz http://cyberelk.net/tim/2007/06/08/unhooking-the-foomatic-parser/#comment-266 Jeremy Katz Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:18:09 +0000 http://cyberelk.net/tim/2007/06/08/unhooking-the-foomatic-parser/#comment-266 Does this mean that the foomatic package will be able to stop being installed by default? Does this mean that the foomatic package will be able to stop being installed by default?

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