CUPS 2 has been released
CUPS, the Common Unix Printing Specification, has just released version 2.0 of its software. Mike Sweet, the project founder, reflects here on what makes CUPS 2 different, how printing has changed over the 15 years elapsed since CUPS 1.0, and what printing means in a world full of wifi and cloud-connected devices.
Today our focus on printing is much different than in 1999. Wireless networking and mobile computing are everywhere. We no longer want printer drivers, but expect printers that support standard protocols and formats with fantastic output quality that we could only dream of 15 years ago. And our printing is more focused and personal.The changes since the previous version of CUPS are actually not all that substantial. This is a minor bug-fix and maintenance release. Specifically:
CUPS 2.0.0 is now available for download. The focus of this major release is on performance and security improvements. Changes since 2.0rc1 include:
The scheduler did not preserve listener sockets from launchd or systemd after a restart ()
Added some USB quirk rules for the libusb-based USB backend (STR #4482)
Spanish localization update (STR #4487)
Updated documentation for 2.0.0 release.
Enjoy!
In the late 90s, I was printing full documents, with charts and graphs in them, composed on my Psion 5MX PDA that fit in my pocket (with slide-out touch-type keyboard), wirelessly via IrDA. It was an impressive road-warrior thing at the time... People carrying around bulky laptops were always tethered to the nearest outlet, took forever to start-up/shut-down so they still had pencil and paper for quicker note-taking. And with no WiFi, organizations being extremely careful and refusing to allow 3rd devices to connect to their network, and almost no laptops having IrDA, they had to drive back home (or to their own office) to print. The option was those ridiculously expensive tiny portable inkjet printers, but I practically never saw anybody with one.Printers have long "support[ed] standard protocols and formats". My first (home) laser printer was made in 1992 (by Epson), and supported (HP's) PCL language in addition to its own. Long before that, business class printers ALWAYS supported Postscript. And plenty of NEW printers, today, intended for home users only support their own proprietary languages.
Samsung's popular CLP printers only include PCL on the few in the series with WiFi, while even their other networked models require proprietary drivers for their proprietary printer language. But you are still able to print to them via your smartphone/tablet with their own mobile printing app. Canon's printers require UFRII unless you've opted to purchase PCL/PS compatibility at extra cost. Konica, Ricoh, etc. Their low-end printers continue to require their proprietary languages. It's taken a lot longer to get to standard printer languages than I would ever have imagined, end users are still ignorant of such technical issues, and manufacturers and retailers are still hiding that info, better than ever before. Fantastic output quality? Laser printers are still too dark. Inkjet printers still saturate the paper. There are pretty good printers today, if you want to spend the obscene amounts of money, but that was true of printers 15 years ago, too. The first Tektronix solid ink (wax) printers were sold in the late 1980s. If anything, modern printers crank-up the theoretical resolution, without actually improving picture quality. And some new models are being sold at the same low resolutions we were using in the early '90s.I'm really not seeing how the world of printing has changed (much).
What's changed? Many printers today have WiFi, and accept SD/Flash cards directly. And laser printers are relatively cheaper. Per-page costs seem to actually have gone-up, significantly. And yes, the uptick of smartphones, more than anything else, (and projectors to a lesser extent) has meant far less printouts, so the printer has become less mission-critical across the business world. I don't know what "more focused and personal" even means....