[Sussex] Argos Catalogue surprise

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Nic James Ferrier wrote:
> Steven Dobson <steve at dobson.org> writes:
>
>   
>> The advantage of a published standard - Postscript.  All postscript
>> printers use the same generic driver.  Therefore a supplier only needs
>> to worry about testing his printer against the same driver all other
>> Postscript printers use.  Likewise the Linux printing subsystems also
>> needs only test one diver.
>>     
>
> Doesn't change the fact that it's ridiculously difficult to setup and
> therefore a potential support issue.
>
> I raise this issue because we linux hackers often complain about
> hardware manufacturers not supplying hardware for us. But with
> printers at least I can see why - and it's our (the linux hackers)
> fault for not building good tools.
>
> Of course... that's also because printing is very boring. Otherwise
> we'd all be working on solving the problem.
>   
Eric Raymond seems to agree with you, but I think it's a user interface 
problem, not an underlying technology one now that CUPS has become more 
stable. Look at http://catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html for his 
famous rant on this. I seem to be the only one who suggested additional 
open source guidelines, rather than merely agreeing with his rant.