9.1 Proposal: Printing support

[Bill Bogstad]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 4:24 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org> wrote:
> We should consider adding basic Print support for 9.1.  In the past
> this has foundered on questions like, "what brand(s) of printers?
> what connection mechanism?"  It seems impossible to support every
> printer and every connection mechanism in a reasonable amount of NAND
> space.
>
> *But*, we should be able to:
>    *  Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to
> school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a "decent selection" of
> printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default
> printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default.

Martin will probably hate me for this...

If you can assume the existence of an XS (or at least a suitably
configured web server), what about doing printing via file upload in
the Browse activity?
Punt ALL the complexity of printer drivers/queues/etc to the server.
Instead of Write generating a postscript/pdf file and queuing it, just
send the file directly.
CUPS already has management of the print queues via http (which is
really just ipp).  So why not add the ability to accept all the
'standard' file formats which
XO activities generate?

Bill Bogstad