(oh well, let's CC -gtk-gnome and see whether I'll get flamed for it) On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 10:34:36PM +0200, Daniel D�chelotte wrote: > I think Debian needs a package that does for printing what etherconf > does for setting up the network. However, unlike with network, the > problem with printing is choice: what spooling system (lpr, lprng, cups, > rlpr, tlpr, maybe others),
You would not want to let users choose their spooling system. Debian (or the DE, see below) should choose an appropriate one it supports. > what filters (apsfilter, foomatic-filters, magicfilters, gimpprint, > some brand-specific packages, you name it), Same here I guess. > and depending on these choices: how to select the printer's make and > model, default papersize, print resolution, and so on and so forth. There is some work on HALificating CUPS being done by the GNOME squad. I think somebody suggested moving this to freedesktop.org, which looks very reasonable. > Just like etherconf, printconf would "only" handle 90 % of the cases, > imposing Debian's prefered spooler and filters because in 90 % of the > cases, they don't matter. Thus, printconf would depend on, say, cups and > foomatic-*, and use libprinterconf0 to detect parallel, USB and network > printers. printconf would also provide a debconf frontend to > foomatic-configure (� la foomatic-gui) and mention the weird > http://localhost:631/ (CUPS configuration). > My concern is: as of today (and AFAIK), when one installs a new Debian > system, one has to know about funny acronyms such as lprng or cups in > order to have a simple printer working. Sure, it sucks right now. > Can we rely on Gnome/KDE to let newbies do that ? Dunno about KDE, but I think the GNOME people will eventually do the right thing. These days, they are miles ahead of Debian in terms of usability, so trying to do it ourselves might be a waste of time, especially if the printer integration will be done one level below the desktop-environment, so that GNOME and KDE would only have to provide their GUI-frontend. If somebody wants to cook up some Debconf magic to ease the pain for Sarge, that would be nice of course, but I doubt we should advertise it as "the printer handling to rule them all". > Is it the right place to discuss such an issue? Dunno really. debian-desktop might be it, but I don't know who reads that. Michael -- Michael Banck Debian Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html
