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Editor: Brian Potkin
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<<Anchor(interfaceclass)>>
 '''[[DriverlessPrinting#ippusbxd|bInterfaceClass]]'''
      The USB standard defines class code information that is used to identify a device’s functionality. Printers are allocated code 7. The host gets information about a connected printer from USB descriptors and loads a suitable device driver such as the usblp kernel module.

<<Anchor(interfaceproto)>>
 '''[[DriverlessPrinting#ippusbxd|bInterfaceProtocol]]'''
      The protocol code of the printer that the USB organisation assigned. Indicates what the [[#interfaceclass|device]] is capable of. For example, code 2 indicates that it accepts bidirectional communication; code 4 indicates that [[DriverlessPrinting#ippusbxd|IPP-over-USB]] is a capability.
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<<Anchor(generator)>>
 '''[[DriverlessPrinting|PPD Generator]]'''
      A technique used by [[DriverlessPrinting#generator1|CUPS]] and [[DriverlessPrinting#generator2|cups-filters]] to produce a [[#ppd|PPD]] to use with [[DriverlessPrinting|driverless printing]].
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<<Anchor(pdfcentic)>> <<Anchor(pdfcentric)>>
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<<Anchor(postscriptdesc)>>
 '''[[#ppd|PostScript Printer Description File]]'''
      See [[#ppd|PPD]].
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 '''[[PrinterDriver/Canon/UFR-II|UFR]]'''
      The Ultra Fast Renderer. A printer driver langage for [[https://www.canon.co.uk/support/business-product-support/office_driver_guide/|Canon printers]].  
 '''[[PrinterDriver/Canon/UFR-II#intro|UFR]]'''
      The Ultra Fast Renderer. A printer driver langage for [[https://www.canon.co.uk/support/business-product-support/office_driver_guide/|Canon printers]].

<<Anchor(UFR)>>
 '''[[#UFR|Ultra Fast Renderer]]'''
      See [[#UFR|UFR]].

An aid to locating items of interest on the Printing Portal pages.

Jump to: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

  • Auto Discovery

    • Techniques which lead to automatic discovery of remote, shared queues and printers on the local network and making them available for printing to.

  • Avahi

    • A framework for Multicast DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD). It allows programs to publish and discover services and hosts running on a local network with no specific configuration and is the equivalent of Bonjour.

B

  • Backend

    • Used for printer discovery and sending a document processed by CUPS and cups-filters to the device after it has been converted to a format understood by the printer.

  • Bonjour

    • An implementation of DNS-SD by Apple. Most recent network printers have it as facility.

  • bInterfaceClass

    • The USB standard defines class code information that is used to identify a device’s functionality. Printers are allocated code 7. The host gets information about a connected printer from USB descriptors and loads a suitable device driver such as the usblp kernel module.

  • bInterfaceProtocol

    • The protocol code of the printer that the USB organisation assigned. Indicates what the device is capable of. For example, code 2 indicates that it accepts bidirectional communication; code 4 indicates that IPP-over-USB is a capability.

C

  • ?cloudprint

    • An application to make locally configured printers available to GCP.

  • CUPS

    • Manages all aspects of printing a document and is at the heart of Debian's default printing system. Subject to continual upstream development.

  • CUPS Error Log

    • A file for diagnosing issues and misbehaviours of the printing system. Logging to the file is done not only by CUPS but by other printing processes such as cups-filters and Tea4CUPS.

  • cups-browsed

    • A setup tool for print queues and printers. Comes as a package separate from cups-filters and is essential on Debian 8 (jessie) and 9 (stretch) for automatic discovery and setup of remote queues and printers. It also supports facilities (such as browsing the broadcasts of pre-1.6.x CUPS servers, servers on other network segments and queue clustering) which are no longer supported by CUPS.

  • cupsfilter

    • A diagnostic program included with CUPS. Convert a file to a specific format, just as if it had been printed through CUPS. Nothing is sent to the printer.

D

  • DNS-SD

    • This is a public service protocol used to advertise and discover printing services on a local network. The services are resolved to hostnames using standard DNS queries. Being a public service, no filtering of announcements is offered. A CUPS server automatically uses the protocol to publicise its queues and it is a feature of many recent printers which have AirPrint. Bonjour is Apple's implementation of DNS-SD and is handled on Debian by Avahi.

  • Device URI

    • A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is an addressing technology for identifying where to dispatch the file sent by a backend. USB and network printers are supported by CUPS with various schemes.

E

  • Embedded Web Server

    • An embedded web server resides on the printer in its firmware. It can be used to manipulate how the printer is presented on the network. It may also offer other facilities, such as scanning.

  • Everywhere Model

    • A queue which is set up with -m everywhere rather than with -m <PPD> or -P <PPD>. The remote queue or printer is queried to generate a PPD.

F

G

  • ?Google Cloud Print

    • An infrastructure to allow printing to a cloud-aware printer or a print queue on a remote CUPS server.

  • ?google-cloud-print-connector

    • An application to make locally configured printers available to GCP.

H

  • HPLIP

    • Free software exclusively for Hewlett Packard (HP) printing, scanning and faxing devices.

I

  • IPP

    • The protocol used by CUPS for local and network communication between client devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, laptops etc.) and printers and print servers.

J

K

L

  • lpadmin

    • The fundamental utility for setting up a print queue. Used by all other setup programs.

  • lpadmin group

    • Setting up a printer with a driver and a PPD is a superuser task; that is, the user has to have root privileges unless they belong to the lpadmin group.

M

  • MFD

    • A multi-functional device. A peripheral which offers a combination of the printing, scanning, photocopying and faxing functions.

N

  • Non-free Drivers

    • Quite a few printers only provide vendor-specific non-free software, which is not allowed to be distributed with Debian. Recent printers from such manufacturers falling into this category should be capable of being used with driverless printing to avoid this restriction.

O

P

  • Page Description Language

    • A computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page. PDLs of particular importance to a modern printing system are PDF, Apple Raster and PWG Raster. The most well-known non-vendor-specific PDL is probably PostScript.

  • PCLm

    • A streaming, PDF-based raster protocol supported by the cups-filters rastertopclm filter but not by CUPS.

  • PDF/A

    • A PDF format aimed at reliable, long-time preservation of archived digital documents.

  • PDF-Centric Workflow

    • All files submitted to a queue are first converted to a PDF. After that, the PDF produced by the conversion is processed by pdftopdf before being sent for further processing and then on to the printer via a backend.

  • PDF Printer

    • Convert a file to PDF using the printing system.

  • pdffonts

    • A utilty to list the fonts and information about each font present in a PDF document.

  • pdfinfo

    • A utilty to extract information from a PDF document.

  • PPD

    • A PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file describes the capabilities of the printer. These capabilities are displayed in the dialogs of applications and with lpoptions and are sent to the queue when selected. A PPD file is often referred to as a driver. Removal of support within CUPS for PPDs is planned for the future.

  • Printer

    • A peripheral device which communicates with the output of a queue to put graphics or text on a medium such as paper.

  • Print Dialog

    • Different Graphical Use Interfaces (GUIs) obtain printing options from CUPS in different ways and differ in the way the application displays them in a user-selectable dialog. The hope is eventually to have a Common Print Dialog.

  • Print Queue

    • A file to be printed is submitted to a queue, which is managed by CUPS. cups-filters is involved in processing the file and the output is usually sent to a printer. A single printer can be associated with many queues. A local queue has a PPD in /etc/cups/ppd and is a permanent queue. It is displayed in the output of lpstat -a. A temporary queue, displayed with lpstat -l -e, is a non-local queue.

  • ?pstoncapcpca

  • ?pstoufr2cpca

Q

R

S

  • Service Location Protocol

    • A discovery protocol that allows the finding of printers connected to a local area network (LAN). It is very likely replaced by DNS-SD on recent printers.

T

  • Tea4CUPS

    • Tea4CUPS is a CUPS backend. Besides transporting data to a printer it allows them to be modified and manipulated before reaching the printer. The modified data can then be sent to any number of outputs.

  • Temporary Print Queue

    • A feature of CUPS 2.2.4 and later when remote, shared queues and IPP printers are advertised on the network. The queue is only brought into existence when it is printed to.

  • texttopdf

    • A filter to convert text to PDF. The output is generally sent to the pdftopdf filter for the pages to be managed.

U

  • ?UFR

    • The Ultra Fast Renderer. A printer driver langage for Canon printers.

  • URF

    • A raster format devised by Apple for use with AirPrint-capable printers. The acronym appears to have originally stood for Universal Raster Format but it is now known as Apple Raster. CUPS converts files to Apple Raster with its rastertopwg filter.

  • USB

    • A USB interface is a very common way of setting up a printer, particularly when it has no ethernet or wireless interface. Consider using ippusbxd with a printer which is capable of interacting with a driverless printing system.

V

  • Viewers

    • The outputs of some filters are viewable with various utilities.

W

  • Wi-Fi Direct

    • Connect over wireless directly with a printer without the need for a wireless access point.

X

  • ?XMPP

    • A protocol to maintain a connection between GCP and CUPS.

Y

Z

See Also


CategoryPrinter