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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I learned about "institutional" PC
printing in a Banyan VINES environment; back then, printers were
only ever hooked up to machines and a shared printer had to be
connected to a PC that was up and running and had logged into the
VINES system once since booting. Next time I revisited this it was
in my Windows NT days and Microsoft's own (I confess, excellent)
books described queue arrangements in which PCs not only didn't
print directly to print devices, they suggested making it where
they *couldn't* by putting network printers on their own network
subnet.<br>
<br>
Since then, I don't think I've ever worked anyplace where
networked printers were set up that way; rather, folks' PCs are
expected to connect to any printer directly and they just let
print jobs collide at the printer whenever and wherever. Now, at A
Former Employer (tm) there was a captive web app arrangement where
a dozen or so Linux Tomcat servers submitted print jobs to CUPS
servers that held a couple thousand queues and in my last weeks
there I did a lot of work to simplify and improve the reliability
and manageability of that whole arrangement; I never got to put it
into production but because the printing plant was
mission-critical I had designed a STONITH cluster arrangement to
handle the CUPS load. I also did away with all the different print
drivers and the fussiness associated with keeping track of which
driver was selected for each printer by going PostScript for all
of the laser printers, but I determined that there was one model
of HP printer we used <i>whose PostScript implementation was
defective</i>! I wound up scripting an automatic net-walk and
firmware detect/replace operation that acted on hundreds of these
printers. Ultimately the new printing plant wasn't put<br>
in production because an initiative to replace the last of the
remaining defective leased printers that couldn't be updated
remotely never happened even though I'd been told it had. But even
there, general desktop/laptop printing was ad hoc just like I'd
seen most everywhere else.<br>
<br>
Another takeaway from that work and other situations I've
encountered is that any application that generates some kind of
structured paper form out of printers should render its original
document in hand-written-but-software-filled PostScript. I have
seen a lot of heartburn come from trying to generate forms in some
proprietary package or using Word/Excel macros and it never seemed
to me that in the longer run it was worth the up-front effort
supposedly saved. Once you've worked out how to render a doc in
PostScript once, it's usually pretty simple to modify even for
people who've never seen bare PostScript before and doing that
cuts out at least one layer of stuff out of your dependency stack.<br>
<br>
Have any of you ever worked anyplace where network printing was
all properly queue-backed and shut away from regular net traffic?<br>
<br>
On 12/15/17 9:38 AM, Solomon Peachy via Ale wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20171215143840.GC9921@shaftnet.org">
<pre wrap="">On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 05:52:19PM -0500, Kyle Brieden via Ale wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I've found, lately, that network printers aren't worth the trouble to "set
up" on my machine. Just navigate a web browser to port 80 on the printer's
IP and load up the web UI. With most modern printers, there'll be a "submit
document to print" button or form. Upload your PDF there and the printer
will make it into a real boy... er, document pretty promptly.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
If you're using a modern-ish printer, especially one that uses
postscript (like I'm sure the LaserJet does) then it's already fully
IPP-enabled with zeroconf.
So a modern Linux distro will auto-discover the printer and set up the
necessary "driver" (really just a matter of fetching the PPD from the
printer) without any user interaction whatsoever.
- Solomon
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