In my infinitely spare time, I am looking at upgrading several printing
related packages on Solaris to more recent versions and delivering them
so that they can be used by Solaris LP, CUPS, or whatever print service
you might install on your system. When these packages get upgraded,
there should be less of a need to deliver redundant versions on the
Companion.
I am looking at upgrading the version of CUPS in the companion to 1.2.3
and packaging it so that it is non-conflicting with the bundled LP
service. The packaging will most likely reflect what Paul Cunningham
and I discussed a while back and he enumerated in his spec file.
ESP GS is at 8.15.1 and probably needs to move to 8.15.2
Foomatic is at 3.0.2 including fixes I delivered to the
foomatic-filters package early this summer
ImageMagick is at 5.4.7 and I am working on upgrading to 6.2.9
Gimp-Print is at 4.2.6 and really needs to upgrade to 5.0
HPIJS is at 1.6 and needs to update as well
and so on.
If you or anyone out there are interested in working on upgrading any of
this, let me know and we can work together on it.
-Norm
Ken Mays wrote:
> Hello UX-Admin,
>
> Solaris 10 06/06 (U2) has the older implementation of CUPS+Ghostscript versus
> what Apple provides (they use a variant PDF rasterer). I think even the
> Solaris 10 Companion DVD uses the older CUPS (v1.1) and Blastwave recently
> moved CUPS up to 1.2.3.
>
> As for easy printing methodologies, banish all that you know of the 'old'
> ways of Sun Solaris printing.
>
> First, ask Sun to update
> Ghostscript+Foomatic+CUPS+GutenPrint(Gimp-Print)+GNOME Print on Sun Solaris
> 9/10 to the current releases. You can't do decent professional-grade printing
> if you don't have the right tools in place.
>
> Also, ask the Sun JDS developers (Glynn Foster) to provide Gutenprint 5.0 +
> GIMP 2.3.11 with their recent releases to Vermillion (see desktop-discuss).
> Then, you'll get access to the better printer GUI for color printing with
> even GIMP.
>
> If you go the route of enterprise-grade virtual printer spools and servers -
> as well as want the support of having 5500+ printer
> models/variations/translations supported under Sun Solaris, I'd make a call
> to get ESP Print Pro from Easy Software Products and use this page:
> http://www.easysw.com/support.php
>
> Well, that is my crash course in the future of Sun Solaris printing for ISVs
> and developers. A few people may get fancy at GUADEC and talk about printer
> GUIs for OpenSolaris or GNOME...
>
> Have fun!
> Ken Mays @ EarthLink, Inc.
>
