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

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-03-25 16:15:28 +0000, Paul Anderson said:

> 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.

IPP is really quite common.

All of the recent and all of the current printers I deal with all 
support IPP, as well as the older printing protocols.

Coincidentally (?), the only printers I'm still dealing with that don't 
support IPP are the HP "departmental" printers that probably date back 
to the same era as that discussion. 

HP has their own issues with creating and maintaining and testing 
software drivers, and the resulting complexity and permutations, too.

The available local and network hardware at OpenVMS sites, you won't 
know without collecting (and with permission) telemetry.

> 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.

On macOS, Bonjeff.app or Discovery.app or nmap, and look for the 
._ipp._tcp and ._printer._tcp names. 

> 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.

I haven't encountered very many end-user apps directly generating 
PostScript or PDF on OpenVMS.  There are a few around, certainly.  
TTI's DEC Document, ports of Ghostscript, and and ports of other tools. 
 Some apps are still operating in the ANSI control sequence era, which 
is a whole 'nother printing-related mess.

There are at least three or five far larger piles of work ahead of this 
work at VSI, though.  If this gets to the top, IPP is probably the best 
path for reducing the effort involved in configuring and managing 
OpenVMS printing.

IP networking has been integrated into most every other platform for 
twenty years and variously longer. We're still dealing with the fallout 
of many of those decisions.   Pragmatically, the more that gets rolled 
into the base OpenVMS distro and the fewer permutations are around for 
all of us to install and manage and test and integrate, the better.  
I'm not referring to separate PCSI kits optionally installed, but all 
integrated in the same kit and all always installed.  OpenVMS suffers 
from a longstanding fondness for permutations, while preserving the 
storage space expectations from the VAX era and the decisions around 
add-on software from earlier aeons, and with the effort involved in the 
ensuing self-service integration of the vendor's own software products. 
 Roll these pieces into the base distro, enabled specific pieces 
selectively, and, yes, expect to deprecate and remove the older bits as 
those age out.  This to overcome the fondness for adding complexity, 
and to overcome the unwillingness to make decisions and to have 
opinions about software and APIs.  This integration and 
de-complexification is all years down the road, of course. 

IPP Related:
https://www.pwg.org/ipp/everywhere.html
https://github.com/apple/cups/wiki/IPP-(Everywhere)-Mini-Tutorial

mDNS Related:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/discovery-dns-sd-browser/id1381004916?mt=12
https://github.com/lapcat/Bonjeff/
https://developer.apple.com/bonjour/
https://github.com/stepheneb/mdns-responder
Maybe Avahi or another option.




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