[kde-linux] KDE printing

[Bruce Miller]

James,
I tend to lurk on the KDE Linux list. My questions (and answers) are relatively infrequent. I have been watching your recent posts and the replies they have brought, particularly from Anne Wilson. I feel compelled to take sides --- and to take Anne's side unreservedly. Long time lurking has shown me that Anne is consistently one of the most courteous and helpful people on this list. When she gets impatient with someone else, the other person needs to look hard at what s/he is doing.

No-one will ever claim that Linux is bug-free. Nor will they claim that it is always easy to configure. But the kinds of problems that you have been reporting turn out to be user error far more frequently than serious bugs or underlying poor design. If you had the experience to be able to judge whether your problems are configuration errors or bugs, you would not be asking questions the way that you do. The upshot is that you put a lot of people's backs up by writing as if you are more expert than they and than the collected developers and by suggesting --- which you have been doing --- that your problems always result from bugs and/or poor design. I can guarantee you a more sympathetic and a more friendly hearing if you adopt a more humble approach. Have you considered an approach like this?:
1)    this is the basic configuration;
2)    attempting to implement "x";
3)    have taken the following troubleshooting steps;
4)    these are results so far;
5)    request further advice

With your current printer problems, I recommend that you go back to basics:
1.    check your printer model on the OpenPrinting database. The traditional URL is linuxprinting.org and more recently, openprinting.org. Both resolve to "http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting". You can establish there that your printer is supported in Linux and which driver works best.
2.    How is your printer connected?: parallel, USB or network? If it is corrected directly (parallel or USB), your task should be trivial; if it is network, you have more analysis to do and the CUPS terminology involves some "decoding." If it is a free-standing networking device, can you ping its IP address? If it is attached to another host on the network, can you ping the host? If the ping is successful, you still need to work out how to define the printer address in your confuration.
3.    Does your system recognize the presence of a locally attached printer? What do lspci -v and/or lshw report? If it is a USB printer, is there a /proc entry for it?
4.    Printer configuration is a one-time task. Since it involves hardware management, it always requires *_root_* access. Printer use is a user task and should always be done from an unprivileged account.
5.    Choose your printer configuration tool. For my money, the old kprinter tool was the easiest to use. If you still have KDE3.x available, I recommend it highly: look under the KDE Control Center or in the base kprinter dialog for the Add Printer icon (a wand). If you don't have access to kprinter, the Web-based interface to CUPS (http://localhost:631) is your next best choice. The terminology on the CUPS setup screens is technically precise but not always intuitive. But if CUPS does not recognize your printer *_and_* successfully print a test page, you need to look hard for a configuration error before you allege a bug.
6.    Distribution-specific printer configuration tools tend to be more problematic and less reliable than kprinter or CUPS, but they can still be useful to ensure that your system recognizes the presence of a printer.

Setting up a printer is one of the most potentially frustrating tasks in Linux. There is an infamous rant by Eric Raymond several years ago about how unintuitive it used to be/to some people still is. Google will help you find it. But remember that Unix was originally written to support a typesetting system and one of its core strengths has always been precise control over printing.

Over the last several years, the combination of KDE and CUPS has shown itself a superbly reliable way to gain access to UNIX's precise control over printing. It is time to stop complaining about your tools and to learn how to use them as a craftsman.

Best regards
Bruce Miller


 --
Bruce Miller, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
bruce at brmiller.ca; (613) 745-1151


Commenting on budget forecasting on the day the budget of the Government of Canada was announced, a retired senior manager of Environment Canada said on the CBC that "economists were invented to make weather forecasters look good."
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