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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Apple Licenses CUPS 222

Posted by pudge from the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dept.
bmeteor writes: "Short and very sweet: CUPS is licensed by Apple. A boon for both Apple and GNU." CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) is a system based on the Internet Printing Protocol for standardized printing on Unix systems. That's nice, but when can I print over the network to my Epson inkjet, like I can in Mac OS 9 with USB Printer Sharing?
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Apple Licenses CUPS More

Apple Licenses CUPS

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  • HP PCL Printers? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this mean OS X will finally support PCL? aka HP LaserJet? Without GS?
    • Does this mean OS X will finally support PCL?

      I can't speak on OS-X (as I've never used it yet), but i can say that I have a HP-5000 and on of their ink jets (I honestly forget teh model number at the moment), and with Linux (using CUPS) I print to them as a RAW device. It's flwless.

      On a similar note, I got my Lexmark Z52 printing from my Linux box here at home just a couple days ago. And no, I'm not using Lexmarks stuff to do it. Just CUPS. :-)

  • This is great! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sc00ter ( 99550 )
    My printer is connected to my windows box, and getting my powerbook to print to it is a freakin' pain! This should help alot!


    Now all they need is something that will let you browse windows shares.

    • You can browse Windows (Samba) shares using OS X.
      • How? Well, without something like DAVE that you have to pay for? I don't want to have to smbmount something all the time, just browse the windows network looking for shared folders.

      • Re:This is great! (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ignoring the fact that you are wrong for the moment (you can *mount* shares but you cannot *browse* them; there is a fine but definite distinction there), what exactly does that have to do with printing?

        Go try using OS X sometime. Tell me how easy it is to set up a print queue to a printer that a Windows or Samba machine has available for sharing.

        Hint: you can't. Certainly not out of the box, anyway.

        Bah. Windows is the ultimate incompatible-ware anyway. Why anyone would suffer to use it is beyond me.

    • DAVE (Score:2, Informative)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 )
      If i'm not mistaken OS X can already access smb shares and it probably wouldn't be too hard to get something like xsmbrowser running on it. If you want to browse and access smb shares on OS 9 there is a product called Dave that makes them show up in the Chooser. Dave is commercial payware but it does work very well.

    • something that will let you browse windows shares

      I installed Sharity [obdev.at] last week. It has a variety of licensing options; I got it free since I'm dot-edu staff. Sharity has excellent SMB browsing.

      Unfortunately it still couldn't access the one share I wanted -- maybe unhappy about a space in the share name. I had to use mount_smbfs in Terminal instead.

      p.s. a quickie Google search [google.com] revealed some interesting options. Remember: Google makes all computing simple!
    • SMB Browse [versiontracker.com]

      versiontracker, learn it, love it.

  • The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.

    Is it better now than it was then?

    --NBVB

    Remember, Free !== Quality
    • I used it around '98 or '99, and it got the job done for me.

      I hope Apple has success -- the PrintManager and the printing architecture in general is a significant weakness of OS X. Printing for me typically entails making a PS or a PDF and moving it to my NeXT for printing or FAXing. It's too much of a bother to deal with the OS X printing tools.

      And I can't share my USB printer, which is just stupid. Neither by NetInfo or by SMB, or by LPR.
      • Gee.. what planet do you live on?

        Printing (and seting up printing) is totally effortless. There's no mystery there. And if your trouble is worth printing to PS or PDF to then move it to you NeXT to print it, then I strongly suggest you try CAPer. It'll let you "export" your printer onto the AppleTalk network (over IP) and use it on your Mac. This is what I do with my N2000 printer on my NeXT Cube.

        Granted, faxing is still a pain in OS X. Though, ease them with Cocoa eFax. It grabs your files and faxes them, and can also receive faxes.
        • It works, I'll give you that. (At least when it sees my Epson USB printer.)

          Most of my problems are related to my printer -- I have a POS LaserJet 6L. To print to it with the NeXT machines, I have to use JetPilot, which is a great app (www.ipc.de), but it has major issues interoperating with LPR and not pure-NeXT printing approaches.

          In any event, it doesn't matter, as I'm in the process of getting a LaserJet 4 to serve as an apartment printer.

          WRT the faxing, I'm much happier moving the files to the NeXT and faxing them -- I haven't found an integrated, computer-based faxing system that comes close to the built-in NeXT fax tools. I have no desire to have my Mac do anything about FAXing.

    • Re:I hope CUPS has gotten better... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Snowfox ( 34467 ) <snowfox@[ ]wfox.net ['sno' in gap]> on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:36PM (#3097846) Homepage
      The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.

      Is it better now than it was then?

      I only tried it for the first time about 6 months ago. My system was printing to my Epson Stylus 860 within about five minutes of installing the .deb.

      Setup is easy and the quality is on par with Windows' output.

      • I started using CUPS about a year ago, and I really like it. I'm running it on RH 7.2, using the gimp-print drivers. It is incredibly easy to set up printers, especially non-PostScript ones - something that vexed me no end under Linux. The gimp-print drivers are very high quality.

        The only thing I'm not crazy about is the default Web front end for CUPS. You might want to do a search on FreshMeat for CUPS [freshmeat.net], to see the different GUI frontends available. I haven't found one that totally replaces the Web interface unfortunately.
    • We're currently using it at my workplace to print to both HP and Lexmark printers. Our Solaris, Linux and NT 4.0 machines all print through it. The only limitation we have seen is that the PS that comes from Windows is not able to be counted correctly in the page_log (i.e. you print a 756 page document and it only shows up as one page). I believe there's a workaround for this that we're looking into, but otherwise it's a good solid platform that we rely on in production.
    • Yowzer!
    • CUPS is excellent. I've used it at work, and it interfaces nicely with all of our network laser printers and inkjet printers.

      There are lots of drivers for different printers you can download (search for CUPS on freshmeat.net). CUPS is very easy to set up and administer.

      I love it.

  • OSX Server (Score:1, Informative)

    by gabeman-o ( 325552 )
    I belive that OSXS 2.0 has some kind of printer sharing already.

  • Interoperability Rocks! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by col. Fudge ( 127111 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:44PM (#3097884)
    Any attempt by any company to introduce new technologies that are based on standards and that provide a means to work well with any and every platform should be considered a plus for the industry. We must get past the platform specific train of thought and focus on systems that make the platform you choose simply a personal choice and not one that will limit your ability to be productive.

    IPP is the way of the future. It provides a mechanism to connect any and every printer in the world together with any delivery mechanism. The possibilities of providing a common printing mechanism are astounding. Imagine doing away with low quality fax machines and being able to send a secure and private document around the world directly to someone's desk. Imagine sending a birthday card to Grandma right to her living room. Imagine printing from a wireless device while walking down the street to a printer at a print shop ready to pick up!

    Forget snail mail and faxing IPP is the only way to go!

    • Re:Interoperability Rocks! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Concur. I am a long-time Apple hater, still bitter over the "Apple ][ Forever lie," the legal thuggery over skins, the software crippling, the one-click license, etc. But if they help get critical mass behind a standard that will benefit non-proprietary operating systems like Linux and BSD, I'm all for it. Just remember--Apple would be just as nasty as Microsoft if they could.

      ~~~

    • Now imagine your grandma receiving 8x10 hard copy of 14 porn spams per day in her living room, or how about a few hundred copies of some script kiddie drivel?

      Printing over the net is great, in fact I've printed from my PowerBook at how to an HP 4550 at work, but security is a must for this kind of thing to become widespread!
      • Just a thought; spam, fax spam and the like wouldn't be so prevalent if nobody ever responded to them.

        I don't know who is. Maybe someone's Grandma really is buying all this viagra, drug alternatives, long distance, cellular services, satellite dishes, descramblers, life insurance, gambling, banned porn and getting killer toner deals with free vacation giveaways while making $1500-20,000 a week from home on their free stock tips.

    • Not a panacea (Score:2, Interesting)

      by maggard ( 5579 )
      IPP is the way of the future. It provides a mechanism to connect any and every printer in the world together with any delivery mechanism.
      Well, if Grandma gives you an account and password for her printer.

      Like any other 'net resource the spammers & maladjusted will attempt to abuse IPP. Unsolicited Commercial Email, Mail Bombs, and Junk Faxes are problems today; Drive-By-Printings could be tomorrow.

      Instead of coming home to 30 flyers advertising take-out places your printer would pump them out continuously along with guaranteed penis enhancements, herbal highs, the latest in puppy porn, and of course a thousand pages of solid black from the dork you belittled on /. last week. Or you'll end up having to write elaborate filters for your incoming queue (procqueue anyone?) previewing everything before allowing it to go through, blocking off known printer-jacking domains.

      No, IPP is great inside a facility and between sites that cross-print a lot but I expect email will remain the standard way of distributing a document. Email is widely deployed, directories are already in place, it can be encrypted & authenticated, uses a store-and-forward architecture, doesn't require the output device be known or any drivers required. The recipient need only have an application capable of printing the document and there are any number of good formats running from the "business-standard" MS Word to Adobe Acrobat to HTML/XML pages on down to good old flat text - ASCII or Unicode.

      Indeed while many print shops take jobs online none I'm aware of accept random ones without pre-arranged accounts. Then most of the time they specify the formats one can HTTP-upload to them or send via a custom print driver in their format (presumably some PostScript or HPGL variant with headers for job identification, output settings, and accounting.)

      So while CUPS and IPP are great things and are definitely making the world more interoperable (Unix & varients, Win2k+, MacOS X, lots of newer printers & print servers) they're not going to revolutionize it any more then standard print queues, Windows Shares, MacOS Printer Sharing, Novell Distributed Print Services, iPrint, etc.

      ps Anyone know of an IPP implementation in PostScript? Might be a great way to "upgrade" all of these older devices with a single loaded print job.

    • Yeah imagine spammers sending pr0n to grandmas' port 631 over the internet--still psyched?

  • you can print over the network if you ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by ssklar ( 13970 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:46PM (#3097889) Homepage Journal
    just do the steps listed in the hint at Mac OS X Hints [macosxhints.com].

  • CUPS vs OMNI (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:48PM (#3097899)
    I just recently became aware of OMNI [ibm.com], a unix printing system by IBM based off Ghostscript. It seems very comprehensive, they list support for *610* printers.

    What struck about this is that I thought CUPS was pretty well-agreed upon by the major players as a common unix (the CU in CUPS) standard. How does OMNI compare with CUPS? Or do they perhaps represent different levels of the whole printing system and do they compliment one another?

    • Re:CUPS vs OMNI (Score:5, Informative)

      by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:51PM (#3097909) Journal
      As my (admittedly small) brain recalls, the OMNI drivers are an offshoot of the OS/2 project.

      OS/2 had some of the best printer support I'd ever seen (at the time.)

      By OS/2 Warp 4 (Merlin), the Omni print driver was there for just about every printer you could get your hands on...

      This is just like IBM -- make some seriously high-quality software, but never tell anyone about it...

      _sigh_

      --NBVB

      • That's funny, because when I tried OS/2 Warp 4 on my PC, I couldn't find a driver *anywhere* for my Canon BJ10-ex.

        That was my primary reason for not adopting OS/2 and going with Linux instead.

        Looking back, I think that was a pretty good decision at the time. :)

    • Re:CUPS vs OMNI (Score:5, Informative)

      by listen ( 20464 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:59PM (#3097931)
      AFAIK....

      Omni is a set of drivers. It competes with the standard gs drivers and gimp-print.

      CUPS is a queueing system. It competes with LPRng, PDQ, etc.
    • Use both.

      OMNI is supported directly in ESP GhostScript [sf.net], a version of ghostscript maintained primarily by the CUPS maintainers.
    • You are mixing the cases.

      CUPS is a printer queue system (the best IMO, right
      now).

      OMNI is a development model (in C++) for easily
      write printer drivers.

      It is based on Ghostscript (ghostscript 6.5x already
      have the omni driver in it). And drivers written
      with omni works like a plugin system to ghostscript.

      This means that you don't have to repatch and
      recompile ghostscript to add a new printer.

      Foomatic
      (http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html)
      al ready supports OMNI, which means that it is able
      to produce the correct driver for your prefered
      spooler (CUPS, lpd, lprng, gnulpr, pdq, staroffice, ...)

      To complete OMNI (and foomatic and cups) is already
      supported in (AFAIK) the Conectiva Linux snapshot
      (http://distro.conectiva.com.br e apt-getable from ftp://ftp.nl.linux.org/pub/conectiva/snapshot) and in the Mandrake Linux Cooker distribution.

  • Linux supports Mac OS X printing (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. install the old pre-10.1 LPRIOM.plugin
    2. install ghostscript
    3. edit lpr.plugin to use your printer's gs driver
    4. use Netinfo to create your domain service printers
    5. use PrintCenter to create your printers
    6. print using any Mac OS X app to your remote Linux-hosted USB or parallel-port printer; this works over wired or wireless airport Ethernet

  • Not so good for GNU (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:57PM (#3097927)
    Apple is only licensing CUPS from the copyright holder (Easy Software Products) to get around the GNU restrictions, so a proprietary version can be distributed without source.

    "The standard CUPS distribution will be provided with Apple's open source Darwin operating system, while an enhanced version of CUPS with Apple's Aqua user interface will be provided with MacOS X."

    • Re:Not so good for GNU (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SirRichardPumpaloaf ( 563323 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @01:52PM (#3098125)
      The Aqua-fied version probably wouldn't be much use to non-OS X users, so I don't see how that's much of a loss to GNU. Apple will probably want to keep the underlying stuff in sync between Darwin and OS X, though, just for their own convenience. If they make any changes to the unix-level parts that get distributed with Darwin they'll have to make the source available. I guess we'll see how it turns out, but for the moment I don't see how more widespread adoption of an improved open printing protocol could be thought to be bad.

    • Plenty good for GNU (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Saturday March 02, 2002 @03:03PM (#3098394)
      Funding Free Software development by selling non-Free licenses is a perfectly reasonable and good action; the revenues from this, remember, will in large part go to pay the folks who write the Free version.

    • Re:Not so good for GNU (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 )
      Apple is only licensing CUPS from the copyright holder (Easy Software Products) to get around the GNU restrictions, so a proprietary version can be distributed without source.

      It's a good thing because of the standards Apple will be using, not because of the license they distribute their software under. Apple has adopted XML as the file format for all kinds of things; does it matter if they read and write those XML files with proprietary closed-source software? The point is that Free software can also be used because XML is standard. I don't know much about CUPS, but it seems to me that I'll eventually be able to use CUPS on Linux to print across the network to my Epson printer connected to my iMac, and that's a good thing.

      Also, would Apple's use of CUPS make it easier to get printer drivers from Mac OS X ported to Linux? Would they even need to be ported, or can CUPS drivers be used cross-platform? This could mean much better printer support in Linux, since hardware vendors who refuse to acknowledge Linux will obviously be supporting Mac OS X...
      • Well, Apple's use of CUPS will make it easier for printer manufacturers to provide drivers for Linux, since the time & money they spend on developing OS X drivers will yield drivers that will compile under Linux as well. I personally know of two printer manufacturers that are very excited about the prospect, and it may be the "push" that is needed to get upper management to support Linux, etc. natively.
    • The no free version will probably be something like the ESP Print PRO modified for MAC OSX,

      Note that the ESP Print PRO is like CUPS on esteroids . http://www.easysw.com/printpro/ and
      it is based on CUPS.

      ESP Print PRO also provides over 3000 high quality drivers.

      As with apple if any company using a *nix based system would like to get high quality drivers and
      support cups, should take a look at this.

    • Re:Not so good for GNU (Score:4, Informative)

      by printman ( 54032 ) on Sunday March 03, 2002 @09:16AM (#3100944) Homepage
      Well, as one of the companies involved in the deal, I can say that the whole purpose of this licensing arrangement is to satisfy the lawyers, and Apple has been working with us to make sure that the standard CUPS distribution 1) builds out of the box for OS X/Darwin, and 2) contains as much functionality as possible (e.g. USB support will appear in the near future, etc.)

      The only thing that won't be part of the open-source CUPS is the Aqua interface and PDF RIP technology, both of which already have suitable open-source replacements in the Linux and *BSD worlds.

  • Woah... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Theoden ( 121862 )
    The first time I read over that title I saw "Apple Licesnses CPUs". My apartment filled with a resounding "huh?" :)
  • It is my understanding that currently the OSX printing subsystem is based on Carbon and the OS9 printing system... does this mean that future versions of the printing system will move over to the Unix side of the fence? Will they wrap CUPS with Cocoa? How is this going to work, exactly?
    • Mac OS X printing is not based on OS9 printing at all.

      Mac OS X native printing uses PDF as the spool file format and uses completely different drivers than OS9 - this is why many older printers are supported in Classic, but not native Mac OS X.

    • Re:CUPS and Carbon (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CUPS and Cocoa? Wouldn't that mean hot chocolate for every OSX user?
    • Actually my guess is that CUPS will mostly utilize the BSD (aka Unix, or Darwin) layer of OS X which is neither carbon or cocoa (It is however accessible to and from both). (see: Mac OS X System Acitecture [apple.com])

      The Aqua additions for the OS X version would, I imagine, include some sort of Cocoa GUI to configure and maintain CUPS as well as some method of translating quartz rendering to something CUPS can print.
  • I have thought that you could set up a printer (even a USB printer) to be shared using NetInfo. Granted, this is the supposition of one who has never done it (but never needed to). I think it might explain how in here : ftp://mAnuals.info.apple.comApple_Support_Area/Man uals/software/UnderstandingUsingNetInfo.PDF I apologize if I am wrong and get people's hopes up. If I am wrong, just look at this as a fascinating document on how NetInfo works. The Finite

  • Interesting licensing model (Score:3, Informative)

    by AIXadmin ( 10544 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @01:29PM (#3098027) Homepage
    It seems that the company that wrote cups has a interesting business model. It is licensing CUPS to non-GPL friendly companies (EG. Anything that is not a Linux distro.) , and that is how it plans to make money. Apple like most of the *BSD's, prefers to touch GPL software with a ten foot pole.
    • Good for them, that's how you make money selling open-source software. GPL doesn't let you do this, because the only money you can practically make with GPL'd software is off support. At least someone is thinking about feeding their programmers... :)
    • Interesting choice of words. It is strange that the BSD-license is mostly promoted as "business friendly" when this would have been impossible through the BSD-license. The same goes for Qt for instance.

      There is nothing wrong with GPLed apps. If you desperately need a closed source version, you can either program it yourself, or get another license from the copyright holder.
    • Apple like most of the *BSD's, prefers to touch GPL software with a ten foot pole.

      OS X, particularly the developer tools, is packed with GNU utilities and other GPL software. Apple has been feeding a lot of patches back, especially to gcc.

    • Actually, we make most of our money from packaging CUPS along with GUIs and drivers in our ESP Print Pro software; that's where you can get a commercially supported version of CUPS, which is what most businesses and many end-users are looking for.

      And BTW, we've been in business since 1993 and have been making money, not from licensing CUPS, but by selling commercially-packaged printing solutions for UNIX. Licensing CUPS only increases the money we have to put back into CUPS, etc.

      Similarly, our HTMLDOC software was not popular until we started packaging it with support. We make money for HTMLDOC not by licensing it but by *supporting* it and providing that turn-key solution...
  • I've got a couple of these Lantronix MPS servers [lantronix.com] and they work great. Support for LPD, AppleTalk, and LanManager. All your network printing needs in one tiny little device.

    And no, I don't work for them, I'm just a very happy customer.

    P.S. I just noticed on my preview page the aqua-colored 3d-ish looking gradient bars instead of normal slashdot green. I don't like them.
  • ...and using an HP ethernet printer, everytime I want to print to the darn thing, I need to reset the printer (known HP driver bug that has lasted for about 3 months now.)

    I had a way more positive experience on OS 9 with printer discovery and sharing. AppleTalk on OS X is just slow and broken.

    PPA, the girl next door.
    • I guess the question is: what HP model? My wife and I just bought an HP1200n and it runs wonnderfully over the network with our G4 running OS X, her PB G3 running OS 9, our Dell running Win98SE, and my iBook running OS X. The iBook is the greatest pleasure out of that experience, as I couldn't print via wireless when we still had our clunky LaserWriter IIg on the network.

      However, there were no issues setting it up to print via LPR - all the computers like it.

    • Try this (Score:2, Insightful)

      by feldsteins ( 313201 )
      Why on earth would you want to use Appletalk at all? Add the printer by entering the IP address for goodness sakes. And if the HP drivers make your job choke try using the generic drivers.

      Best of luck.

  • It's my trumpet and I'll blow it if I want to (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @02:30PM (#3098260)
    That's nice, but when can I print over the network to my Epson inkjet, like I can in Mac OS 9 with USB Printer Sharing?

    You could try the alpha version of my own printing system [freshmeat.net] which I've written in Perl after three attempts to get CUPS to work ended in failure. I use it to print across the network to my Epson S.P. 1290.

    TWW

  • At least this is better than fooling around with AppleTalk as both the network protocol and peripheral protocol. Finally, the days of having to install [Apple|Local]Talk Bridge to print and use the network at the same time will be over!
  • Apple has been in the practice of seeking out or attempting to create standards to for years - it's nice to see them embracing pre-existing standards. The integration of BSD and MacOS is a great thing for both communities, and I hope to see more announcements like this in the future!

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