New Printing API beta

[Kai Hendry]

Hi guys,

Since CUPS browsing is being deprecated in 1.6 and more importantly a
paying customer wanted better support for their network printer, we've
introduced a new printer= API documented upon:
http://webconverger.org/printing/

Basically you need to manually define your printers up front now,
instead of relying on CUPS magic.

Be great to get your feedback and comments. :-)

Kind regards,

[gla...@gmail.com]

Awesome. I'm going to test this ASAP. Is it available on webc-18?

[gla...@gmail.com]

Okay, just tested it. Works like magic!

Let me first of all say that this is freakin' excellent. CUPS browsing was a nightmare and the boot API is stupidly easy in comparison. For this, you're awesome.

Some feedback: When I first boot up the kiosk and attempt to print a page, my printer shows up in the print dialog, but the "Status" field is empty. If I initiate the print job, nothing happens. When I reopen the print dialog and wait for several seconds, then the "Status" field of my printer eventually shows "Connected to printer." At that point, print jobs actually get printed.

Is this just a case of having to wait a few moments after boot before Webconverger connects to the printer? Or is the case that Webconverger won't make an attempt to connect to the printer until someone first tries to dispatch a job to the printer?

Again, absolutely awesome work with this feature...

On Monday, March 18, 2013 9:48:31 AM UTC-4, Kai Hendry wrote:

[Gowtam Lal]

One other bit of feedback: there seems to be about a 20-25 second delay between dispatching the print job, and the printer actually receiving the print job. This happens regardless of whether or not it's the first job dispatched since booting Webconverger. I'm going to test with other models to confirm this delay.

On Monday, March 18, 2013 9:48:31 AM UTC-4, Kai Hendry wrote:

[Kai Hendry]

On 23 March 2013 04:45, Gowtam Lal <gla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One other bit of feedback: there seems to be about a 20-25 second delay
> between dispatching the print job, and the printer actually receiving the
> print job. This happens regardless of whether or not it's the first job
> dispatched since booting Webconverger. I'm going to test with other models
> to confirm this delay.

What is your printer= invocation?

Don't be afraid to setup a bridged connection
http://dabase.com/blog/Sharing_an_Internet_connection_in_Archlinux/
and tcpdump :-)

In my experiences with network printers, socket:// sometimes works
better that IPP based device URIs and yes it can be surprisingly
slow... ~20s for a printer to start printing. I might bring this up
on the cups general list, though I suspect it's the printer hardware.

Kind regards,

[Kai Hendry]

On 23 March 2013 03:23, <gla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some feedback: When I first boot up the kiosk and attempt to print a page,
> my printer shows up in the print dialog, but the "Status" field is empty. If
> I initiate the print job, nothing happens. When I reopen the print dialog
> and wait for several seconds, then the "Status" field of my printer
> eventually shows "Connected to printer." At that point, print jobs actually
> get printed.

I have not noticed this. I assume you're using IPP? Try socket://

> Again, absolutely awesome work with this feature...

Thanks, I'm pretty pleased we have an elegant solution here to the IT
disaster zone that's printing.
Though there is still some work to be done
https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/issues/146 and we really could do
with your contributions.

Kind regards,

[Gowtam Lal]

My boot API invocation is printer=Back1,socket://123.123.123.123,drv:///sample.drv/generic.ppd

I've also tried drv:///sample.drv/laserjet.ppd.

Additionally, I've tried with different printer hardware. The kiosk and the printers are all on the same subnet. In all cases, there is a 15-25 second delay between the print job dispatching from the kiosk, and the printer actually beginning to print the job.

Just to confirm, from your end, when you hit "Print", you're saying you see your printer begin to print within 5 seconds or so?

As for contributions, I'll definitely look at the backlog and see what I can pick up.

[Kai Hendry]

On 27 March 2013 02:06, Gowtam Lal <gla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Additionally, I've tried with different printer hardware. The kiosk and the
> printers are all on the same subnet. In all cases, there is a 15-25 second
> delay between the print job dispatching from the kiosk, and the printer
> actually beginning to print the job.

I must confess, I find CUPS extremely complicated. So I would
encourage you to take this upstream to CUPS.

However, besides sharing what little I know upon (the updated)
http://webconverger.org/printing/ (you are welcome to contribute),
I've had the experience whereby different documents have different
processing durations. Have you compared plain text, versus a simple
PDF like http://ppd.webconverger.com/2013/tests/ versus a complex
Webpage like cnn.com?

Oh btw are you using PDFJS or EPDFVIEW to view PDFs, if you are
printing PDFs. There is a hint how to switch between the two at the
bottom of http://webconverger.org/printing/

> Just to confirm, from your end, when you hit "Print", you're saying you see
> your printer begin to print within 5 seconds or so?

Honestly, no :/ Would be great to improve this.

> As for contributions, I'll definitely look at the backlog and see what I can
> pick up.

I would be grateful. I'm hoping to obtain a 2nd hand network printer
and work through the UX. As mentioned before, printing is a bit of
minefield and I'd rather spend time on core Webconverger aspects,
unless people are paying me to sort things out.

Kind regards,

[Kai Hendry]

I've improved the cups-pdf guide upon the bottom of
http://webconverger.org/printing/

That should help us work towards better printing. :-)