Bug#995792: cups: Rejects plaintext files, assuming they have indexed Braille format

[Nikolaus Schulz]

Package: cups
Version: 2.3.3op2-7
Severity: normal

Hi,

when I'm trying to print plain text files, cups considers them to be in
indexed Braille format and rejects them as unsupported:

$ lpr foo.txt
lpr: Unsupported document-format "application/x-idx-doc".

It appears that /usr/share/cups/mime/indexbraille.types has a matching
rule, which shouldn't happen I guess, since the magic found there does
NOT match.

Purging printer-driver-indexbraille made the problem go away.

Cheers,
Nikolaus

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.14.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages cups depends on:
ii cups-client 2.3.3op2-7
ii cups-common 2.3.3op2-7
ii cups-core-drivers 2.3.3op2-7
ii cups-daemon 2.3.3op2-7
ii cups-filters 1.28.10-2
ii cups-ppdc 2.3.3op2-7
ii cups-server-common 2.3.3op2-7
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.77
ii ghostscript 9.54.0~dfsg-5
ii libavahi-client3 0.8-5
ii libavahi-common3 0.8-5
ii libc6 2.32-4
ii libcups2 2.3.3op2-7
ii libgcc-s1 11.2.0-8
ii libstdc++6 11.2.0-8
ii libusb-1.0-0 2:1.0.24-3
ii poppler-utils 20.09.0-3.1
ii procps 2:3.3.17-5

Versions of packages cups recommends:
ii avahi-daemon 0.8-5
ii colord 1.4.5-3

Versions of packages cups suggests:
ii cups-bsd 2.3.3op2-7
pn cups-pdf <none>
ii foomatic-db-compressed-ppds [foomatic-db] 20210824-1
pn smbclient <none>
ii udev 247.9-3

-- debconf information:
cupsys/raw-print: true
cupsys/backend: lpd, socket, usb, snmp, dnssd

[Steve McIntyre]

Control: severity -1 serious

This bug just bit me, and I'm disappointed nothing appears to have
been done here to remedy this. "lpr file.txt" is a common workflow,
and this bug breaks that. Please fix!

--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com
< sladen> I actually stayed in a hotel and arrived to find a post-it
note stuck to the mini-bar saying "Paul: This fridge and
fittings are the correct way around and do not need altering"

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Thorsten Alteholz, le sam. 29 oct. 2022 22:43:02 +0000, a ecrit:
> The problem seems to be that it was installed on a system without need for
> it.

That's just a small part of the problem. The real problem is a bug in
the matching rule, which I have now fixed.

> Wouldn't there be a better package than printer-driver-all-enforce to
> add a Recommends: for it?

Not sure to understand the question: isn't printer-driver-all-enforce
precisely meant to install all drivers?

Samuel

[Samuel Thibault]

Steve McIntyre, le lun. 24 oct. 2022 10:16:39 +0100, a ecrit:

> This bug just bit me, and I'm disappointed nothing appears to have
> been done here to remedy this.

I had actually not seen the bug report, the title of the bug report
didn't catch my eyes. Thus why it hadn't been fixed so far.

Samuel

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

Le dimanche, 30 octobre 2022, 00.43:02 h CET Thorsten Alteholz a écrit :
> The problem seems to be that it was installed on a system without need

> for it. Wouldn't there be a better package than printer-driver-all-enforce
> to add a Recommends: for it? Maybe OdyX can shed some light on it?

The printer-driver-all metapackage was introduced as an easy way to get the
widest possible support for all potential printing drivers. As britney
doesn't look (or enforce) recommends, the source package also ships printer-
driver-all-enforce that has the same recommends as depends, to abuse britney
in keeping all drivers in testing. The latter package was not really meant to
be installed or used.

Anyway, when that mechanism was introduced, printer-driver-all was a
dependency of task-printing, but for buster (or bullseye), I had decided to
drop that task, and let cups rely on driverless printing by default. I'd say
printer-driver-all is still a useful "if you have printing problems, install
that with its recommends", but definitely not as central to the printing stack
as it used to be.

As for indexbraille, as Samuel wrote, it was a mimetype mismatch, so that's
solved!

--
OdyX