cups ppd files

[James Wilkinson]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Well, consolehelper does not appear to me to be a symlink to anything.
> 
> Obviously the programs are related - it would be bizarre if they weren't -
> but to have two programs with the same name which do different things
> seems to me a recipe for confusion.
> It means that if I type system-config-printer
> the effect depends on the definition of $PATH on my system.

Um. The concept of having two different implementations of the same
command has been there in Unix for most of its life. Most shells have
built-in versions of things like echo and true, but there are still
stand-alone versions of the same basic program. And on many "real"
Unixes, there will be System V versions of programs in /usr/bin, and BSD
versions in /usr/ucb: the whole idea is that BSD-loving users can set
their PATH to have the BSD versions ahead of the System V ones.

I think the real question is "does this make things easier or harder for
users?" It does mean that you only have to remember the name
system-config-printer whether you're logged in as root or not. It means
we only have to tell enquirers here "(don't) use system-config-printer".
Users can get on with using s-c-p quite happily without being aware of
the distinction (you've apparently only just noticed it), whereas having
different names for root and non-root usage would mean that all users
would have to be aware of the two names.

Good operating system design is largely about hiding (normally)
irrelevant details and providing a consistent interface to users and
programs (and providing a way to handle those details when necessary).
The Unix pipe feature is a classic -- pagers, printers, text files and
compression utilities are all different, but you can redirect standard
output to any of them, normally without having to worry about the
differences. A more "classic" approach would have different outputs for
printing and screen output. It might be easier for use if you only ever
used a few programs with a few alternative outputs, but it wouldn't be
nearly as powerful.

Would it make any difference to you if both root and users ran the same
s-c-p, which prompted for passwords if and only if the user didn't have
enough privileges? As that's basically what we've got -- it's just that
the behaviour depends on which s-c-p is run.

Aaron Konstam wrote:
> You are confirming what I keep saying. Do not use system-config-printer.
> Use the cups web interface.

I think that's completely irrelevant from what Timothy's saying. You're
saying that once you've got *into* (the main user interface of) s-c-p,
the current version isn't up to much.

Timothy's point is that *getting* there is inconsistent.

If you like, read "pirut" instead of "system-config-printer". It has
exactly the same issues.

James.

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