I have now sent an inquiry to Brother through the contact form, via the link "Contact Us( U.S.A./Canada/Latin America" at the bottom of their Linux page (link in my previous posting). The URL is
https://secure6.brother.co.jp/LinuxContactUs/contact/Linuxform.html I have sent the following text: ---------- I am Till Kamppeter, leader of the OpenPrinting work group at the Linux Foundation. The goal of OpenPrinting is to make printing under Linux "just work". Linux distributions are developing concepts that installing and using software under Linux is as easy as possible so that one does not need any expert for using a computer with Linux. As on Mac OS X or on smartphones applications can easily get found with a software installation facility and a certain form of "AppStore". The selected software gets easily downloaded and installed, without need of doing any adjustments by the command line. All needed additional packages get automatically installed, too and also needed changes on the system configuration (like creating folders) is done automatically. This is Plug'n'Print and users and admins love this. For setup of printers we get even further: If a printer is connected the distribution's printer setup tool automatically recognizes this, checks which model the printer is, and if no suitable driver is installed on the local system, it sends the printer model data to the OpenPrinting web site and the web site returns a suitable driver (hosted at OpenPrinting or at the printer manufacturer) to the user, which the system automatically installs. Other major ptinter manufacturers already supply drivers and/or PPDs via OpenPrinting or supply a free software driver suite to the distributions. For Brother printers setup under Linux is not very user friendly: - The user must find Brother's Linux site: http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/index.html - The user needs to install both an LPD driver and a CUPS wrapper. - The user has to read the FAQ and other documentation to apply lots of configuration changes via the command line - The user has often to install packages with special command line options (like "--force-all"). - Setting option defaults (like Letter/A4) does not work straight-forward with the standard methods of CUPS, but only by cryptic config scripts of ancient LPD times. All this causes tons of bug reports at the distributions, like for example https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/701856 By designing the drivers the right way or even better making them available as distribution-independent LSB packages for automatic download, Brother printers can be made the most user-friendly printers. You only need to follow the instructions on this site to correctly design and package the drivers: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/writingandpackagingprinterdrivers Especially important for the driver design is the "What to do and what not to do section". Please also contact me for help as I have ten years of experience with integrating and packaging software for Linux distributions, with both RPM and DEB. Also note that CUPS is the principal printing system. Support for LPD and LPRng is not needed any more. Or in so rare cases that it makes much more sense to have native CUPS drivers and wrappers for using them with LPD/LPRng. I will list your LSB-packaged printer drivers on the OpenPrinting web site (Linux' "AppStore" for printer drivers) free of charge and this way your printers will "just work" for users. Without cryptic configuration work and command line options. I also invite you to the OpenPrinting Summit 2011 in San Francisco: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting /openprinting-summit-san-francisco-2011 to meet with leading developers of the printing stack of Linux (CUPS, Ghostscript, Common Printing Dialog, system-config-printer, driver developers of other printer manufacturers, ...), to learn about the newest printing technologies under Linux and to be always up-to-date. There are no special requirements and no conference fees. If you are only in the support team and not a developer of Brother's printer drivers. Please forward this message to the developers and their managers. Thank you in advance. ---------- I hope it will make its way to the right people. Unfortunately, there are no other possibilities to give feedback. There were also never Brother engineers on an OpenPrinting Summit. ** Changed in: cups (Ubuntu) Status: New => Triaged -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/701856 Title: Brother's printer/scanner drivers awkward to find and install -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
