🚀 go-pugleaf

amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:

> If you invent a new protocol, no existing systems will speak it. Therefore
> you are pretty well stuck distributing source for the printer driver. Given
> wide variety of OSs you'll have to support, the code will have to be pretty
> d**ned generic.

"Ted Ede -- ted@mbunix.mitre.org" responds:

> Well, just to put in a plug for QMS, they do support printing via
> TCP/IP over Ethernet with their Imagen product line.  The protocol is
> fairly straightforward, and is documented.  I never bothered to code
> up a print symbiont/daemon for it.  You can get one for cheap
> from QMS for Un*x, cheap for VMS from Northlake software (providing
> you already have IP for VMS [it supports CMU's PD product]), or free from
> Columbia for VM and I think MVS.  Combined with remote lpr/lpd
> capabilities, it's pretty tough not to get to one of these printers if
> you really want to.  And yes, they support accounting.

Last time we looked at Imagen's TCP product it was a simple byte pipe, with
every byte sent being interpreted as Impress and no way to do statue querying
or out-of-band commands.  This means if your printer runs out of paper it can
sit there idle all night because the drive software cannot determine WHY it
is not printing and so cannot inform a human operator of that fact.  In
tomorrow's world of distributed printing resources we cannot assume the
printer will be centrally located.

The protocol DEC uses to talk to its LPS40 over TCP is documented in a series
of technical notes.  IMHO it is somewhat overkill for a LW-class printer,
but it might serve as the starting point for a discussion of what people
WANT from a TCP print service protocol.

In particular, what KIND of "support for accounting" is needed?  Number of
pages printed out on that printer in the aggregate?  Validation of Kerberos
tickets for each page printed? :-)

Something in between no doubt...

-- 

Ben Cranston <zben@umd2.umd.edu>
Warm and Fuzzy Networking Group, Egregious State University
My cat is named "Perpetually Hungry Autonomous Carbon Unit"; I call him "Sam".