Re: [Lpr-discuss] Release critical Bug: lprng, spooldir permissions, and gpr

[Thomas H. <thu...@co...>]

Ben Woodard wrote:
> So the final question is where do we put the ppdfiles? Mark talked to
> Ted T'so and he suggested /usr/share/postscript/ppd and that sounds
> fine to me.

If I may chime in here for a second...

It occurred to me awhile back that it would seem to make better sense to
keep all the ppd files in a single directory rather than scattered about
in the individual spool directories of each printer.

What prevented this from happening at the time (this was a couple of
months ago, so it's probably changed by now) was that libppd could only
access the ppd if it was in the spool directory.

It would appear to me that there are several advantages to having all
ppds installed in the same place. For GPr, I can think of a couple right
away:
1. You can eliminate the "Browse" button to search for PPDs and just
list the files in the ppd directory.
2. A simple database allowing the name of the printer to be linked with
the ppd file (among other things) could easily be created and located in
this directory. In the list of ppds in the GPr UI, the actual printer
name could be listed rather than the *sometimes* cryptic ppd name. (Of
course, there is the argument that the user shouldn't even have to pick
the PPD since it should be already configured in
postscript.cfg/printcap. I think someone convinced me awhile back that
users should still be able to choose their own ppd in case they want to
override the defaults - although this is most likely a rare occurrence.
I wasn't overwhelmingly convinced, but it was easier to leave it in than
to take it out!)

At any rate, I think both of these additions would be welcomed by
inexperienced users (for future releases of GPr).

As far as which directory should be used...I'll leave that to you guys!

-- 

Thomas Hubbell
CompuMetric Labs, Inc.
thu...@co...