[Tfug] LPD vs LPRng vs CUPS

[Claude Rubinson]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 08:36:08PM -0700, Predrag Punosevac wrote:
> The real job for all of above is done in filters and drivers.

Reason #1 why I hate cups.  No built in filter for dvi files.  This to
my mind, is actually quite telling--it means that the CUPS developers
aren't steeped in Unix.

> Problem is unless you have very expencive printer(needs processors and  
> memory) that printers do not understand PS language so you additionally  
> have to send ps file to such thing.

Not really that big of a deal or that expensive.  You just need to pay
attention to what printer you buy.  It is more than worth the extra
money to get a printer that speaks PostScript because of all of the
hassles that it will save you.

> This is more or less summary of the printing for dummies like me.

Again, if you're a printing dummy--and I think that, unless we admin
large and complex printing queues--the simplest thing is to simply buy
a printer that speaks PostScript.  Traditionally, all Unix programs
output to PostScript and then you don't have to worry about filters or
anything.

> As for me. If I just have a desktop (running FreeBSD or OpenBSD) with one  
> printer LPD+apsfilter more than enough as I do not need
> to compile CUPS. The last is not quite true as the CUPS-base is needed for  
> many applications for reasons not clear to me like K3b uses cups base so  
> that would really prevent you from using LPRng on the desktop. It is not  
> written for desktop printing anyway.

I finally gave in and switched my notebook over to CUPS a while back
after fighting tooth and nail to keep my printing subsystem lprng.
But there are just too many programs that want CUPS and don't
understand the tradition Unix queue system (Firefox, OpenOffice2,
etc). And CUPS does provide a nice lpr alias.  But, frankly, I hate
it.  Config files are split all over the place, the web-interface is
slow and clunky (every time I want to change a printer config, I have
to reconfigure the whole thing), and I fail to understand how in the
seemingly millions of PPD files that are out there, how there never
seems to be the particular one that I need.  Plus they seem to keep
moving where you're supposed to keep local configs, meaning that I've
had to rewrite my dvi filter a couple of times now.  All in all, the
whole experience is decidedly non-Unixy and rather aggravating.  I
miss my printcap (even admitting that the syntax was a bit arcane). :(

Claude