Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Primera Impressa IP60 InkJet Photo Printer

[Solomon P. <pi...@sh...>]

On Mon, Apr 01, 2019 at 09:31:21PM +0000, Matt Dunham wrote:
> I am wondering if you have heard of our recently-new photo printer, 
> the Impressa IP60: 
> https://www.primera.com/equipment/photo-printer.html

Yes, I've seen some press on it.

> The IP60 is currently a Windows 10 and (almost) Mac USB printer, but 
> we are getting some inquiries from the iPad world, and want to support 
> AirPrint, and the option we have started with is to use a Raspberry Pi 
> as a wireless print server.

A logical first step.  I hope you release a native Linux driver for
folks who want to drive it directly from Linux, preferably in
redistributable open source form so it can be bundled with Linux
distributions.

> We have developed a basic CUPS filter and drv/ppd for this printer, 
> but there is clearly more involved in supporting AirPrint.  The basic 
> printing is working, but we are struggling with controlling 
> orientation and scaling.  Would you have any recommendations about how 
> best to approach supporting iPad fully?

The short answer is that CUPS is intentionally not capable of acting as 
an airprint server [1].  With some elbow grease you can get it to at 
least get recognized by an Airprint client, but the moment you step 
outside standard paper sizes (eg Letter or A4) things fall apart 
quickly.  Despite nomially being based on IPP (a standard Apple helped 
create) airprint heavily relies on proprietary custom extensions.

You can request access to the AirPrint specs from Apple, and should be 
able to hack your print server's IPP-handling code (eg in CUPS or by 
directly building your driver on top of the ippserver example) into 
being complaint with AirPrint, but I've been told that Apple places some 
tight restrictions what you can do or release using that documentation.

(AFAICT Apple seems to be most concerned about someone inadvertantly 
 combining it with an F/OSS license that includes copyleft or patent 
 grant provisions...)

 [1] https://lists.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/055500.html

Good luck,

 - Solomon
-- 
Solomon Peachy			       pizza at shaftnet dot org
Coconut Creek, FL                          ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.