CUPS 2 has been released

in hardware on 2014-10-15 11:47 (#2TCH)

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!

I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-15 16:49 (#2TCS)

Wireless networking and mobile computing are everywhere.

Wireless networking wasn't pervasive (and back then we only had line-of-sight IrDA, not WiFi), but PDAs were everywhere... A huge number of people had Palm Pilots, many had Windows CE devices or Psions. Windows CE was first released in November 1996... They didn't make the OS for a class of devices that didn't exist.

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.

We no longer want printer drivers, but expect printers that support standard protocols and formats

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.

with fantastic output quality that we could only dream of 15 years ago.

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.

Today our focus on printing is much different than in 1999.

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....

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-10-15 17:10 (#2TCT)

[off topic] happy to meet another Psion 5MX user. It's one of my favorite gadgets, unmatched even now by some modern stuff. I owned two of them, and regret their demise. Wrote this about it back in '06: http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/171-The-Psion-5-for-Writers-on-the-Move.html

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-15 17:37 (#2TCX)

They had a great device, but really let everything fall apart right when they had the perfect chance. They didn't offer ethernet, nor WiFi when it came along, so it quickly felt like a relic. It seems they pinned all their hopes for years on the Nokia 9210 Communicator, which had plenty of limitations the Psion 5 didn't (short battery life, no touch-screen, etc), and still didn't offer ethernet and WiFi, being an even more specialized device that always depended on cellular connectivity, when that was primitive (early 2G with poor coverage), painfully slow, and ridiculous expensive. A great device for its one specific use case of business travelers with plenty of money to burn, but that's about it... Most people (including the key demo) were perfectly happy tethering their PDAs to their phones via RS-232 or IrDA at the time, so it wasn't a big hit, unlike later smartphones when 3G came around. It wasn't until years later with the 9500 that WiFi (and a camera) was added.

But I'm just ranting at this point. They had a great device, but they failed miserably to really capitalize on it, so somehow Apple managed to re-create the market that had practically died-off, with an inferior device (no keyboard, crippled productivity apps, etc).

Also, I would have kept the Psion 5MX around and working to this day, as as dumb terminal (via RS-232), but the screen resolution was too low to show 80x24 characters on-screen comfortably without scrolling all the time to view everything, and the CPU (or perhaps the terminal software) was so slow that it wasn't nice and responsive and comfortable to use.

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-10-16 09:09 (#2TDK)

I used mine for portable writing - never needed or wanted internet (realizing fully I'm not representative of your average gadget user). Just whipped it out on the train/bus and started typing away - loved that thing. Ran for ages on two AA batteries and with a Flash memory card installed, could just save stuff right to the card, export to text, without having to worry about connecting it over RS232 and the like. Good for taking notes in class, too, without having to carry a laptop around.

Good times. Done now though.

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-15 20:27 (#2TD1)

I'd agree. The big thing is the cost of the low end laser printers has declined. So I have much better quality than I had with ink jet years ago. But a laser of today and a laser of 10- 15 years ago is about the same quality.

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-17 15:25 (#2TER)

"about the same quality", not true at all! The laser printers people bought twenty years ago are in many cases still running.

You cannot say the same for laser printers bought in the last 5 years.

Qualtity has plummeted.

But I suppose you meant print output quality, not build quality. ;)

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-10-19 14:12 (#2TFF)

That's true for a lot of things. I was just thinking about the quality of external CD/DVD burners. When the things first came out they were pretty solid devices. Then the rush to beat the competition in price leads to skimping on the design and build characteristics, and the later devices are chinsy and flimsy and stop working early.

Maybe the trick is to buy at the beginning of a new product's cycle, while prices are high and build quality is high.

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-19 16:39 (#2TFQ)

IMHO, the trick is to find a brand that has and maintains quality standards. I typically start by looking for companies that provide longer warranties than all their competitors. After that, sites that maintain fair (ie. unmoderated) customer reviews like Amazon, can be extremely helpful. It can also help to shop at smaller stores, where they stock only one or two models of each item, and their profits are directly affected if there are high return rates on an item, unlike big-box stores which are happy to stock cheap junk (Walmart/Best Buy).

Price drops are so extreme in electronics that buying early in the product cycle is often many times more expensive than buying later and just replacing it several times with similarly cheap items. Of course, finding inexpensive but reliable products later is an even better solution.