[Info-vax] DCPS V2.7 and Brother printers

[Mark Berryman]

On 3/25/19 10:15 AM, Paul Anderson wrote:
> On 3/25/19 11:28 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
>> IPP is a far more recent iteration of printing, and IPP has some 
>> definite benefits over what went before.  Among other benefits, IPP a 
>> way for the host to ask the printer what it's capable of providing. 
>> Secure connections via IPPS, too.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol
> 
> I noted this line in the article:
> 
>> IPP is the basis of several printer logo certification programs 
>> including AirPrint, IPP Everywhere, and Mopria and is supported by 
>> over 98% of printers sold today.
> 
> Really?  98%?  Back when we worked for HP, the folks who implemented IPP 
> V1 in the printers said they weren't going to update IPP at all, as they 
> thought IPP was not going to have much of a future.  Maybe V1 was "good 
> enough" and that's what's in their printers today.

Are these the same folks who said "OSI will replace TCP/IP"?
or "Groups with guitars are on their way out"?
or "Everything that can be invented has been invented"?
(of course, those sayings are now considered apocryphal).

Every network printer I've looked at in the last 5 years supports IPP. 
Most, if not all, support IPP Everywhere.  With IPP Everywhere, one can 
always query the printer for its URI.

I also haven't seen one that won't print both PDF and postscript 
natively but I believe PDF is the only thing that is mandated.

> I found it to be a little difficult to find out the URI of the HP 
> printers we have here at VSI.  Not in the documentation, not on the 
> printer configuration page.  There's a utility you can run to query your 
> network for IPP printers that gave me the URI for two of them, and one 
> worked from VMS with the IPP support in VSI TCP/IP.
> 
> So we could add IPP support to DCPS.
> 
> We could also port CUPS to VMS.
> 
> We could add support to DCPS as we did in the past, but we're not owned 
> by a printer company any more.  That makes it much harder to add support 
> for new printers.  Plus I'm working on the new network stack and don't 
> have the cycles for doing much with DCPS.
> 
> Suggestions welcome.

It seems to me that DCPS has features that CUPS does not have (forms and 
libraries, setup modules, printing with altered margins, etc.).  On the 
other hand, CUPS allows one to print to another host running CUPS that 
happens to have a directly attached printer that you are trying to print to.

My opinion: add IPP support to DCPS quickly.
Consider porting CUPS to VMS somewhere down the road.

Mark Berryman