Detection of printers in FC4

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:28:18 -0500, gslink <gslink at one.net> wrote:
> This is fine but searching for and publishing printers that
> just have a lan address is wrong.  On a large lan this could take hours
> and result in a long printer listing.


And your suggestion to fix this is?
Are you suggesting that auto-detection not be done?
Are you suggesting that listing of auto-detected printers not be done?

Network detection has to be done at some point to compile a list of
available printers so there is no getting around the issue of it
taking a long time to get the printers available on the network
without a centralized listing to communicate to.

I'm much more interested in preventing a default long list of
available network printers.
But to do that there must be a way in the ui to hide and to unhide
individual ques in the browsable list.  I would also love to be able
to see the ip address of device where the que is being browsed from,
and I would love to be able to 'hide' all ques from specific ip
addresses.

In a large network I can not rely on the Description string that shows
up in the s-c-printer listing to be correct, its just a fact of life
on a big network. If i could see the ip address in the listing I could
at least track down the devices location that is broadcasting and
inform IT about its misconfigured cups ques and make some progress
either getting the que removed or its Description corrrected.

Right now... sitting on a large network with my fc2 or fc3 machine...
my cups listing is a wasteland of auto-detected cups ques from linux
machines in offices with locally attached printers with Descriptions
like 'location unknown' and que names like 'printer' and 'printer1'.
Intermixed with listings from an IT department controlled cups system
that I actually want to interact with.   I typically need to use 3
printers on the network, a fast black and white, a color phaser and a
plotter. The black and white is the default.. and the default works
just fine. But negotiating the 300+ list of printers every time i want
to print to the plotter is an annoyance, especially when the list
isn't static and i can't assume the plotter i want is going to show up
in relatively the same place bracketted by the same list neighbors.

In a better world i would be able to hide cups servers and individual
ques that I don't want to see on the client computer I control in my
office.  In a perfect world there would be a way in the ui to seperate
a listing of 'available' printers from the printers i have selected
already to be usable on my client. Hidden printers would be listed in
the very long 'available'  list while printers I have selected are in
the default list shown in s-c-printer and the appliction print
dialogs. Thus preventing me from having to see a list of 300+ printers
on the network unless I want to select a new printer to use from the
'available' list. In my perfect world.
my s-c-printer list and my printing dialog list would by default show
exactly 3 printers, the printers i use.  If i need to use a 4th
printer. i'd hop over to the available list and select it to be
usable.

-jef