Re: Bug#433555: ITP: cnijfilter -- Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

2007-07-18 Thread Kenshi Muto 
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At Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:12:06 +0100,
Roger Leigh wrote:
> Nikolaus Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > * License : partly GPL, partly non-free
> >   Description : Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS
> >
> >  This driver provides printing functions for Canon inkjet printers
> >  operating under the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) environment.
> 
> How does this compare with the Canon driver included in the most
> recent Gutenprint upload (5.0.1)?  This is a completely
> reverse-engineered driver, but it's free software and has improved
> dramatically in recent months.

Canon driver has a feature to communicate with printer and take
more informations than other free drivers, such as the status of
toner. Plus there is a GUI to see printer status easily (though
it uses GTK+1).

Unfortunately, the quality of Canon's code is totally very poor.
In my experience, many bugs hide behind the proprietary side.

Their code targets only i386. Although I asked Canon before,
they answered they hadn't any plan to open its code or provide
for other architectures such as amd64.

Thanks,
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Re: Bug#433555: ITP: cnijfilter -- Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

2007-07-18 Thread Roger Leigh 
Nikolaus Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> * License : partly GPL, partly non-free
>   Description : Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS
>
>  This driver provides printing functions for Canon inkjet printers
>  operating under the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) environment.

How does this compare with the Canon driver included in the most
recent Gutenprint upload (5.0.1)?  This is a completely
reverse-engineered driver, but it's free software and has improved
dramatically in recent months.


Regards,
Roger

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Re: Bug#433555: ITP: cnijfilter -- Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

2007-07-17 Thread Evgeni Golov 
Hi Nikolaus,

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:31:29 +0200 Nikolaus Schulz wrote:

> * Package name: cnijfilter
>   Version : 2.70
>   Upstream Author : Canon Inc. 
> * URL : http://cweb.canon.jp/drv-upd/bj/other.html
> * License : partly GPL, partly non-free
>   Description : Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

Are you aware of these packages:
http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/#canon ?
I think they do contain the same tools ;)

Regards
Evgeni


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Bug#433555: ITP: cnijfilter -- Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

2007-07-17 Thread Nikolaus Schulz 
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Nikolaus Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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* Package name: cnijfilter
  Version : 2.70
  Upstream Author : Canon Inc. 
* URL : http://cweb.canon.jp/drv-upd/bj/other.html
* License : partly GPL, partly non-free
  Description : Canon inkjet printer drivers for CUPS

 This driver provides printing functions for Canon inkjet printers
 operating under the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) environment.
 This includes setting printer-specific options like printing quality,
 quiet operation mode, maintenance functions like cleaning the print
 heads, and monitoring printer status like ink level, paper jam, cover
 opened, and so on.


NOTES
- -

I am not sure if the wnpp bug is the right place for such annotations,
but there are *so* many peculiarities with this package, which makes me
feel the most important should be mentioned here.

This is actually about several packages, and it is a *very* messy thing.
For a start, there is no canonical english web site for these packages,
the URL in the package description is japanese only.  (Ugh!)  If you are
like me and don't speak japanese, you may want to proxy the site with a
translation service like [1].  There is also an ftp address for most
packages, but it doesn't work for everyone:
ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux.

Since the licence is partly non-free, I will post it to debian-legal in
the next days for advice.  (I am optimistic that it allows distribution.)

If all goes well, there will be several Debian packages for each
supported printer.  I have not yet determined how these are best
organized, both as source and binary packages; unfortunately the
upstream tarballs are non-standard (in lots of ways), for example 
their organization varies (!, *argh*) from split tarballs to big,
combined source rpm's (oh boy!).

The non-free material from Canon is a couple of binary-only libraries,
covered by a special licence.  (Ouch!)  All other programs are GPL,
plus, where needed, a special exception allowing to link against the
said libraries. 

The packages are actively developed upstream (good!), but not maintained
(what?!): each released version supports the then-current printer models
only, and is not maintained after release. (Oh ${DEITY}!)  

So, I plan to make versioned source packages like cnijfilter2.7, and try
to backport some stuff to older versions that support older printers.
The mapping between driver versions and supported printer models is
here (but see the note below). 

v2.0: BJ S500.
v2.1: BJ F900/BJ F9000/BJ S300.
v2.2: Pixus 550i/Pixus 850i/Pixus 950i.
v2.3: i250/i255.
v2.4: Pixus 560i/Pixus 860i/Pixus 990i.
v2.5: Pixma iP1000/Pixma iP1500/Pixus iP3100/Pixus iP4100/Pixus iP8600.
v2.6: iP2200/iP4200/iP7500/iP6600D/MP500.
v2.7: iP3300/MP510/iP4300/MP600/MP160/iP2500 series/iP1800 series/iP90.

Depending on the country, at least some of the model names varied.  E.g.
the "Pixus 550i" was sold as such in Japan, but in Europe (and I think
in USA, too) it was called "Canon i550". 

Since I have such a i550 printer, I've started with v2.2 of the driver.
When these packages are ready and tested, I'll continue the way up to
v2.7.  Testers with printers listed above are welcome!  (Oh, you say you
want to co-maintain this evil thing?  Even better!  But you have been
warned. :-)

Finally note that, as of v2.6, the upstream packages were renamed from
"bjfilter" to "cnijfilter".  So much for the broad overview; I hope I
didn't forget anything essential.  I'll probably turn up soon with some
more dirty details on debian-mentors. :-) 

Cheers, 
Nikolaus


[1] http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish

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