Classes (was Re: New printer administration tool design for comments)

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Ven 10 février 2006 13:13, Tim Waugh a écrit :
> On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 08:31:34PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>
>> 2.12 Queue routing
>>
>> 2.12.1 Printer groups
>>
>> The user must be able to create aliases for groups of printers, and
>> print to the group in apps (with the job sent to the first printer in
>> the group which is available and ready)
>>
>> For roaming users which have access to several networked printers (some
>> of which may be on another physical site) the choice of the preferred
>> printer in the one group may be based on user location (dhcp hints,
>> hostname, whatever)
>
> In CUPS terminology these are "classes".  Yes, the administration tool
> could configure classes (it can be done using IPP).  I would rather
> avoid having user-defined classes, though -- system classes should be
> sufficient.

A typical user will want a "dumb fast black and white printer" class. If
you allow for network user-specific printers (smb...) the printers a
particular user may have at his disposal to constitute classes will be
very different from the ones known at system-level.

For laptop users system printers will be corp printers, but user printers
will be corp printers + home printers, or even home printers + corp
printers + local printers (you really do not want a laptop user to drop in
system mode just because he's working on another site)

>> 2.12.2 Rescue jobs
>>
>> When jobs are stuck in the queue of a printer which is no longer
>> responding or stuck somewhere, and if other queues with compatible
>> characteristics (same PS level and paper...) are available or created
>> later, the print jobs should be routed (automatically or after prompting
>> the user) to these new queues
>
> I don't think that CUPS is capable of this.

CUPs routing capabilities suck compared to LPRng:(. It might work with a
little prodding of the printer admin tool (not sure)

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot