Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #openprinting, aggregated by home.social.
... loaded (it would be even in the way for CUPS to access printers).
So in the modern world of CUPS and not having parallel printers, throwing unfiltered data directly at the printer works with CUPS:
lp -d PRINTER -o raw FILE
Here the queues PPD gets ignored and the data just passed through.
For network printers you can also often use:
nc -w1 HOST 9100 < FILE
First, it is not PRN or COM, this was MS-DoS, and as this DoS is already solved by replacing the system by Linux, we have some /dev/... files which could take data directly to a printer:
- /dev/usblpX
- /dev/lpX
X = 0, 1, 2, ...
At least they are there if the appropriate kernel module is loaded and the appropriate connectivity hardware (parallel port, USB) is there.
USB is there but as CUPS does not use the usblp kernel module, the module is not ...
... (optionally) opens the print dialog and prints the test page.
We are anyway working on the portal's API:
https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/discussions/2016
WDYT? What would be the best solution for a nice test page?
... So as it seems that CUPS 3.x has not this powerful plugin filter and so also test page concept any more, we need now ask the developers of printer setup tools, currently
- GNOME Control Center
- KDE Print Manager
- COSMIC Printers (in Settings and stand-alone)
- system-config-printer
to build a (branded) test page generator into their tools.
Or we build it into the XDG Desktop Portal, that printing some kind of command file (or a dedicated API call) ...
... driverless IPP printing (AirPrint, Mopria, IPP Everywhere, Wi-Fi Direct Print), and they are PDF, Apple Raster, PWG Raster, and PCLm.
Input formats are limited to well-known formats, especially the standard input format PDF but also plain text, images, ...
I do not know what Michael Sweet's idea for a test page is. ...
Yes, CUPS 3.x would be a problem here as it drops the filter concept. It goes strictly all-IPP and so it seems to not have any support for plugin executables, like the old CUPS' filter/backend concept.
CUPS comes with one additional executable to do the filter work, but it is only separate to run as unprivileged user and to not make CUPS crash when the filter executable crashes.
The conversions are pre-defined by CUPS, as we only need the formats of ...
... printer's capabilities via the PPD file, these properties can be included in the test page, as we see in the original one.
Also, the filter can, as you say, generate arbitrary graphics and output them as PDF. No problem. A library like PDFio could help for the generation of the complex PDF file format, see the other filters in the current libcupsfilters.
Each desktop environment or distro could provide their own test page "filter" for branding.
@AdrianVovk Yes, this would work. The bannertopdf filter also works that way. It is a a program generating a banner page, and also the current test page. It is, as you say triggered by a special MIME type, but the input file does not only contain the magic string to get identified as this MIME type, but also some parameters.
We can modify bannertopdf to make a better test page, or even add a "testpage" filter dedicated for that purpose. And as each filter has access to the ...
Do not think that legacy drivers will cease to work and you have to buy a new one, This is Microsoft's way to go all-IPP with Windows Protected Print.
Our way at OpenPrinting af going all-IPP and doing away with classic printer drivers (PPD files + filters) is that for legacy printers we introduce Printer Applications, software emulations of driverless IPP printers. So no worries about this warning ...
@agowa338 I do not know the scripting which NixOS uses to apply the printer entries in your configuration file.
It can be that perhaps the PPDs are not in the right directory, or compressed PPDs are not supported.
OR
"model" requires a printer model URI, not PPD name, so run
lpinfo -m
and search the output for your printer, then use the first word (string up to the first space) of the line as value for "model".
@Jill_linuxgirl And have a look (listen?) at the Community Feedback. Patrick has praised my participation 2 weeks ago, in ep. #477, about the cruelties of printer manufacturer's greed, and he has the right printers: Epson EcoTank and Brother laser (actually LED), no cartridge-based inkjets ...
RE: https://mast.linuxgamecast.com/@Jill_linuxgirl/117032791344583501
You all want to hear somebody rambling about the most hated type of hardware? Planned obsolescence? Pseudo purchase or hidden rental? Big companies investing in you and then complaining that they did a bad investment? And ways you can help yourself out of it right now and even better (hopefully) in the future?
Then your destination is here, in the brand-new episode 477:
The 2026 cohort of #OpenPrinting GSoC contributors is doing great!
We got a new, more modern web site, System76's COSMIC desktop environment is getting printing support, both printer setup tool and print dialog, KDE Print Manager is made rady for the CUPS 3.x future, we get CI testing all around, more fuzz testing, a multi-function printer simulator for testing, development, and debugging, a C++-free PDF interpreter based on PDFio with permissive license, and more ...
The forth edition of the Opportunity Open Source in the IIIT Allahabad, India, is coming closer and we still have space for submission of proposals for talks, workshops, panels, BoFs, demo tables, ...
Therefore we have extended the deadline to the end of this month!
Submit until Friday, July 31, 11:59pm IST (18:29 UTC)
We are eager to see your amazing proposals!
Call for Proposals:
https://events.canonical.com/event/154/abstracts/
OpenPrinting News:
https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-Opportunity-Open-Source-4.0-Call-for-Proposals-extended-to-end-of-July
@phranck Thanks for posting to spread it more.
@giamik And thanks to you by making me aware.
But I know it already, I saw their very first announcement on the croudsupply site and then I immediately looked up the creators on LinkedIn and contacted them, offering collaboration, especially as they were already telling that they use #CUPS.
I joined their Discord channel, made suggestions to them and no Openprinter and OpenPrinting work together ...
@juanmitaboada has invited me again to speak on the @opensouthcode!
I will give you an update on what we are doing at OpenPrinting in my talk:
OpenPrinting - We continue to make printing just work!
How are we approaching the next generation of CUPS? New printer setup tools in #KDE, #GNOME, and especially in #COSMIC, a lot more ... and ...
... Akarshan Kapoor will present scanning in immutable and sandboxed environments ...
https://www.opensouthcode.org/conferences/opensouthcode2026/program/proposals/1118
OpenPrinting has a new web site now!
Great new features:
- Blog posts listed with teaser image, author, and date
- Embedded video playing in posts
- Search facility for text content and for printer/driver look-up
- Printer/Driver look-up with pre-built, static pages: Faster, more functionality
Thanks to @rudraps for his GSoC 2025 project and also to the contributors helping finish it this year!
Enjoy our new site!
https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-The-New-OpenPrinting-Website
After 3 successful Opportunity Open Source conferences we will celebrate the 4th one, in the
Indian Institute for Information Technology (IIIT) Allahabad, in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India!
It will take place on August 28-30, 2026!
The Call for Proposals is open until July, 3, see link below.
https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-Opportunity-Open-Source-4.0/
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7467709764303757312/
@leo @keen456 Printer Applications are not restricted to Snaps. The first ready-to-install binary packages of them are indeed Snaps, but this is because Snap allows for distro-independent packaging system software and daemons, in contrary to Flatpak and AppImage, and also Ubuntu, which supports Snap best is a very widespread distro.
Generally, you can package Printer Applications in other formats, we work also on OCI containers (Docker, cloud-native, ...), or just DEB or RPM ...
Yes, these bridges are the Printer Applications, software emulations of driverless IPP printers which talk with the non-driverless printer hardware on their other end. They replace classic printer drivers and PPD files.
CUPS will stop supporting classic drivers and PPD files from 3.x on.
So the recommended architecture for printer drivers is the Printer Application.
@keen456 I have also sent a longer e-mail to the lead of the KDE Linux project, Nate Graham, to discuss the best way of how to handle printer drivers in the distro.
I have also invited Nate to join the Matrix chat group of printing support in KDE and he did.
@keen456 Thanks for the ping. I went there now and have posted a longer reply, giving some background and answering the questions of several commenters.
Here is another testimonial of my work at OpenPrinting!
Nick from @thelinuxexperiment
has posted a video about the desktop software he uses for his day-to-day tasks on his Linux machine and at 19:24 min he tells how easy it was to use his HP multi-function printer on Linux with the KDE desktop and that, despite he considers printers "terrible", they always worked for him under Linux, while under Windows it was a nightmare.
@sjvn a gallon of gas is getting more expensive than a gallon of printer ink ...
Nirav Patel, founder and CEO of @frameworkcomputer told this in his live presentation of the new Framework products (esp. the new Framework 13 Pro) yesterday.
Nobody shouted "Keyboard" in that moment. You probably can imagine what they all shouted ...
A device which many people want Framework to make (see also the comments on this video) ...
And if you still cannot imagine it, I was also one of the people who suggested to Framework whether they could make such a device. I made my suggestion some years ago in @frameworkcomputer 's community forums.
https://community.frame.work/t/framework-could-make-repairable-printers-multi-function-devices/