[21] in athena10
Re: Printing and Athena 10
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Geoffrey Thomas)
Mon Dec 24 01:28:42 2007
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 01:28:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Geoffrey Thomas <geofft@MIT.EDU>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
cc: Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>, athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <1198477232.6088.27.camel@error-messages.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0712240122530.7678@geminorum.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
On Mon, 24 Dec 2007, Greg Hudson wrote:
> For non-athena Linux and OSX machines, I am not aware of any CUPS
> mechanism for autoconfiguring the default printer based on browse
> information, but it's possible there's one I don't know about.
I believe that the CUPS server can just return the list of printers in
order based on proximity (as determined, e.g., client IP address). This
way you could select nearby printers and ignore the long list, but still
have every Athena printer available in the dropdown. I haven't yet gotten
around to writing any code for my CUPS ideas, so I don't know if this'll
actually work.
Another suggestion that may be worth considering is a QuickPrint-like
solution, where CUPS' list of printers only contains a single virtual one,
and a dialog box popped up immediately after printing lets you select the
printer off of e.g. a map that also shows `cview printers` information.
This would work around the problem of software having inconsistent
printing dialog boxes; in current Athena, OpenOffice.org for example has a
static list of printers that includes most but not quite all the printers
you would want, and no way to specify arguments to lpr.
--
Geoffrey Thomas
geofft@mit.edu
