Libre Software Meeting
Bordeaux July 6 - 10 2004
Bordeaux July 6 - 10 2004
With this meeting we want to get the key developers of the printing-related projects together so that they ...
We propose this workshop as a hacker’s meeting: The participants are together with PCs and laptops (connected in a LAN and to the internet) and work on their projects.
The meeting should be held during the whole Libre Software Meeting 2004 in a "Hacker’s Room". Near the end of the Libre Software Meeting there will be a printing track in the conference where the printing-related projects and their results of the hacking session are presented to the visitors. In the "Hacker’s Room" their will be no scheduled talks. Perhaps everyone could introduce himself and his project shortly on the first half day, then people can hack, discuss, or whatever helps for the project.
These steps are subject to change, as some steps can already be done and new ideas could appear until July when the workshop actually takes place.
These are my ideas for now, as soon as this proposal is distributed to the participants, their ideas will be collected and added. I will send updated proposals as soon as they are available.
Foomatic’s foundation is a database which contains informatation about printer hardware and printer software (spoolers and drivers), and how they interoperate: which driver supports which printer how well and which print options can be controlled with the selected printer/driver combo?
The system integrates every free software printer driver with every free spooler. It makes all the driver’s options available to the user. It’s main part is an XML database which contains entries for all free software printer drivers and more than 800 printers. It provides all information about the driver’s command lines with all its options. Users can easily configure printer queues under all free printer spoolers with an online-configurator on the linuxprinting.org web site (or, alternatively, from a locally installed copy of the database).
Foomatic is now an inofficial standard: Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, Conectiva, Debian, Knoppix, and other distributions are using it.
In all Posix-style operating systems, as GNU/Linux, *BSD, Unix, ... applications generate PostScript as device-independent page description format to send the pages to be printed to the printer spooler.
If the destination printer is not a PostScript printer, the software PostScript interpreter GhostScript is used to translate this PostScript output into the printer’s native language using a printer driver. The current versions of GhostScript are fully compatible with the PostScript Level 3 standard and so they are able to convert or display every PostScript file. The drivers are either compiled into the GhostScript executable, a plug-in to the IJS interface of GhostScript, or a filter which converts generic raster graphics output of GhostScript into the printer’s native language. A special type of filters are the CUPS raster drivers, a special driver concept developed for the CUPS printing system.
GhostScript development is done in various tracks. The main development happens under the non-free but open-source AFPL license. After an AFPL GhostScript version reaching one year of age it is released under the GPL as GNU GhostScript. ESP GhostScript, whose development is lead by the CUPS project, is derived from GNU GhostScript, but with several bugs fixed and coming out of the box with all compile-in drivers.
Gimp-Prints main goal is uncompromising quality. For a part of the supported printer models, this has been achieved to such a degree, that many users regard Gimp-Prints output as superior to the native vendor driver’s output in a Windows environment. Gimp-Print, contrary to its legacy name, has long outgrown its origins as a plug-in to the well-known image manipulation program. It has become a general-purpose color image dithering software, which can be compiled to become either a GhostScript printer driver, an IJS plug-in for GhostScript a CUPS printer driver, a Gimp plug-in for printing, or a multi-purpose library to be used by other programs.
It currently supports around 500 printer models, mainly color inkjets, but also lasers and dye sublimation printers.
This is the first free software printer driver project driven by a printer manufacturer. HPIJS provides free software support for nearly all of HP’s inkjet printers and all PCL-5e/5c laser printers. It is regularly updated when new printer models appear. The project works closely together with Foomatic and Foomatic PPDs are shipped with the HPIJS package.
Having a big knowledge and code base from the printer drivers of their OS/2 operating system, IBM has developed a highly modular, XML-database-driven printer driver package to make these resources available for free operating systems. The system supports more than 400 printers and it is planned that it can be dynamically expanded to any printer for which there is an UPDF description file.
HPOJ is an HP-supported project to make HP’s multi-function devices working to their full extent under free software. Besides printing they can already scan and make photo memory cards available to the PC. In future releases it is planned to also support PC-controlled faxing.
Started as graphical administration and printing frontends for the CUPS printer spooler KDEPrint is the most sophisticated free graphical printing environment: It supports the spoolers CUPS, LPD, and LPRng, sets up printers with the help of Foomatic, and even does things as driver export for Windows clients, pre-filtering of jobs with arbitrary commands, accounting, and more.
The goal of the OpenPrinting WG is to develop and promote a set of standards that will address the needs of desktop to enterprise-ready printing, including management, reliability, security, scalability, printer feature access and network accessibility (Mission statement from OpenPrinting web page).
