Foomatic Database
=================
foomatic-db
-----------
The collected knowledge about printers, drivers, and driver options in
XML files, used by foomatic-db-engine to generate PPD files.
Till Kamppeter
http://www.openprinting.org/
This README contains mainly info for developers. See the file USAGE if
you want to know how to use Foomatic.
Copying
-------
To most of this package the GPL applies (see http://www.gnu.org/),
exception are the PPD files in db/source/PPD, they can have different
licenses (mostly MIT), see the comments in the beginning of the PPD
files and the license texts in the corresponding driver XML files.
Bugs
----
If you spot a data error or any other bug, please report it on the
OpenPrinting bug tracking system:
http://bugs.linux-foundation.org/
Choose "OpenPrinting" as the product and "foomatic-db-engine" as the
component.
Intro
-----
This is the stable version of Foomatic. This version is also the base
of our database web interface on
http://www.openprinting.org/
Programs and important files from this package
----------------------------------------------
configure.ac
The source from which GNU autoconf generates the "configure" script
acinclude.m4
Additional macros for the "configure" script
make_configure
Calls aclocal and autoconf to generate "configure" from "configure.ac"
and "acinclude.m4"
Makefile.in
The template from which "configure" generates the Makefile
install-sh
Helper script for "configure"
db/
The XML database. See below.
xmlschema/*.xsd
XML Schema files to verify the XML database entries. There is one for
each XML file type (printer, driver, option) and an additional one (types.xsd)
which is used by the first three.
To verify XML files run
xmllint --noout --schema xmlschema/.xsd db/source//.xml
For example for a driver:
xmllint --noout --schema xmlschema/driver.xsd db/source/driver/ljet4.xml
For all printers use:
xmllint --noout --schema xmlschema/printer.xsd db/source/printer/*.xml\
Do this check whenever you create or edit XML files to assure that your
XML file is correct.
Dependencies
------------
This package does not require anything else. It is needed by
foomatic-db-engine, the database engine of Foomatic. It is required to
use foomatic-db-engine 4.0.0 or newer, as it contains important bug
fixes and also support for nested composite options. Do not use this
database with older versions of Foomatic.
See the USAGE file for installation details.
About the database
------------------
The database is provided by this package, additional database entries
are in "foomatic-db-hpijs", other Foomatic XML files and PPDs are
supplied with the drivers. "foomatic-db-engine" is needed to make use
of the Foomatic XML data.
The database is located in one system directory, usually
/usr/share/foomatic, but it can be also at other places (Install this
package at first and after that foomatic-db-engine so that
foomatic-db-engine gets configured correctly automatically). In this
directory there is the following structure:
db/ - the database
db/oldprinterids - translation table for old numerical
printer IDs
db/kitload.log - list of third-party "kit" files, logged
by foomatic-kitload
db/source/ - "source" data, provided by humans, etc
db/source/printer/.xml - printer-specific data, one per printer id
db/source/driver/.xml - driver-specific data, one per driver name
db/source/opt/.xml - option data, one file per option
db/source/PPD/ - Ready-made PPD files, usually supplied by
printer manufacturers for their PostScript
printers.
You can edit the files whenever you want and regenerate the affected
printer queues with foomatic-configure, there is no on-disk cache, the
data is always directly derived from the source files. So your changes
will be taken into account without any special steps.
Data
----
There are three main source datafiles (printers, drivers, and options;
annotated examples:
printer/HP-LaserJet_4000.xml
============================
# The printer file contains information specific to a particular
# printer.
# Make and model are not internationalized. There will eventually be
# an "alias" mechanism, but the need is different.
HPLaserJet 4000
# According to the Adobe specifications for PPD files every PPD file
# must contain a unique DOS-compatible file name (the "*PCFileName"),
# a file name with an up to 8 characters log base name and an up to 3
# characters long extension, and upper and lower case letters being
# considered as equal. As every PPD file is for a printer/driver
# combo, we let the first 6 characters being provided by the printer
# entry:
HPLJ4K
# The first two characters should be the manufacturer prefix as listed
# in Appendix D of Adobe's "PostScript Printer Description (PPD) File
# Format Specification Version 4.3", available on
# http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/5003.PPD_Spec_v4.3.pdf
# Various stuff about the machine
# Printer types can be , , , ,
# , , , . Other types
# we have to add to the CGI script on OpenPrinting to make the web
# interface displaying them properly.
# At some point we can make color be less of a boolean flag and more
# of a section full of goodies.
# In theory this is a list. In practice We've only got one per
# printer which is the maximum resolution the manufacturer claims for
# this printer. Do not put empty tags (like "" or "" here
# if the resolution is not known. Leave out the tags (or the whole
# section).
12001200
# Information about ink, drums, etc.
# The comments are supposed to be qualitative ("Separate drum and
# toner cartridges")
toner
# There can be 12A1975 elements with manufacturer
# part numbers for the various carts, etc it takes. Unfortunately,
# this is not made use of, one could make a consumable database with
# this for example.
http://www.pandi.hp.com/pandi-db/prod_info.show?model=C4118A&name=LaserJet4000
# The lang section. In practice this will be only minimally useful;
#
# - Backends can pstops the ps down a level if needed
# - Backends know if pjl options apply
# - Backends can know if direct text printing will work
#
# Commonly used language tags: , , us-ascii
# The autodetection stuff
# There are three ways to auto-detect a printer, via the parallel port
# (...), the USB (...), or SNMP
# (TCP/Socket-connected printer, ...). Through these
# interfaces the printers report back an IEEE-1284-complient ID string
# from which the fields "MFG" (...),
# "MDL" (...), "DES" (...),
# and "CMD" (...) are used. The string itself
# can be put between ... tags, but all items
# which are not constant for all printers of this model, as the serial
# number ("SERN:...;") and the device status ("VSTATUS:...;") have to
# be removed here. As the ID string is usually the same for all
# detection methods, one can put the entries between
# ... tags, then the ...,
# ..., and ... are only used for
# differences to the data between the ... tags. A
# complete entry could look like:
#
#
#
# MFG:HEWLETT-PACKARD;MDL:DESKJET 600;CMD:MLC,PCL,PML;CLASS:PRINTER;DESCRIPTION:Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 600;
# MLC,PCL,PML
# Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 600
# HEWLETT-PACKARD
# DESKJET 600
#
#
#
# If you use CUPS, you get the device IDs of all locally connected
# (USB, parallel) printers and of printers in the local network by
# running:
lpinfo -l -m
# On Linux you find this info for the parallel ports (/dev/lp,
# = 0, 1, 2, ...) in the files
#
# /proc/sys/dev/parport/parport/autoprobe*
#
# for the USB under Linux it is more complicated, easiest is to use a little
# Perl script, called "getusbprinterid.pl":
# You need to find the IOCTL call value to pass to the perl ioctl function.
# Here is a little C program that does this. This is easier than trying to
# use p2h and convert the *.h files to perl.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
# /*
# print the IOCTL call value for printer information
# */
# #include
# #include
# /* From the /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/printer.c */
# #define DRIVER_VERSION "v0.11"
# #define DRIVER_AUTHOR "Michael Gee, Pavel Machek, Vojtech Pavlik, Randy Dunlap, Pete Zaitcev, David Paschal"
# #define DRIVER_DESC "USB Printer Device Class driver"
#
# #define USBLP_BUF_SIZE 8192
# #define DEVICE_ID_SIZE 1024
#
# /* ioctls: */
# #define LPGETSTATUS 0x060b /* same as in drivers/char/lp.c */
# #define IOCNR_GET_DEVICE_ID 1
# #define IOCNR_GET_PROTOCOLS 2
# #define IOCNR_SET_PROTOCOL 3
# #define IOCNR_HP_SET_CHANNEL 4
# #define IOCNR_GET_BUS_ADDRESS 5
# #define IOCNR_GET_VID_PID 6
# /* Get device_id string: */
# #define LPIOC_GET_DEVICE_ID(len) _IOC(_IOC_READ, 'P', IOCNR_GET_DEVICE_ID, len)
# /* The following ioctls were added for http://hpoj.sourceforge.net */
# /* (HPOJ is replaced by HPLIP, http://hplipopensource.com/): */
# /* Get two-int array:
# * [0]=current protocol (1=7/1/1, 2=7/1/2, 3=7/1/3),
# * [1]=supported protocol mask (mask&(1<
# Our grading system. It's US-style letter grades A, B, D, and F,
# which the website shows as "Perfectly", "Mostly", "Partially" and
# "Paperweight" .
# THERE IS NO `C'!!!
A
# Arguably, the scores should live with the printer/driver association
# and not on the printer, but then it's a big hassle to figure out if
# a printer works... So the score is the one reached with the driver
# working best, the "recommended" driver.
# There's a spot for this "recommended" driver, usually the driver
# which gives the maximum output quality. It is for user information
# on the web site, but newbie-friendly printer setup GUIs should use
# it, too. system-config-printer, printer setup tool of Fedora/Red
# Hat, Ubuntu, and Mandriva Linux makes use of it, also the former
# printerdrake of Mandriva Linux.
Postscript-HP
# The following optional section describes with which drivers this
# printer works. A valid printer/driver pair can be defined by either
# adding the printer to the driver's printer list (the way how it
# worked all the time) but also by adding the driver to the printer's
# driver list. This way a printer can get associated with a driver for
# which there is no driver XML file and a driver can list a supported
# printer which is not in the printer XML database. For providing a
# PPD file both printer and driver XML files must exist, but it is not
# important in which of the two the printer/driver relationship is
# defined.
# The driver list in the printer XML files was introduced for once
# defining links to ready-made PPD files (relative paths without "/",
# "http:", "https:", or "ftp:" in the beginning are relative to
# $libdir/db/source/, absolute links can point to external sites, as
# for example the site of a printer manufacturer, but they must always
# provide the non-interactive download of the PPD file, for example
# via "wget") and second, listing the supported drivers for
# visitor-contributed printer entries (from web input form). The
# comments section is for adding comments specific to the
# printer/driver combo. As it is human-readable it is
# internationalized. Each driver entry here must have a driver ID. PPD
# file link and comment are optional.
Postscript-HPPPD/HP/HP_LaserJet_4000_Series.ppd...
# The tag marks entries which are entered by visitors
# via the printer input form on the OpenPrinting web site. It does not
# appear in approved entries (= all entries in the BZR repository of
# the foomatic-db package).
# If there is a web site with additional interesting info about this
# printer, it can be mentioned in the entry by putting it between
# ... tags,
# The regular notes section. The allowed tags are:
, and many other simple tags (, , ,
# ...). Note that to distinguish what is XML and what is the embedded
# HTML, the following replacements have to be made:
#
# < --> <
# > --> >
# " --> "
# ' --> '
# & --> &
#
I don't believe this:<p>
<i>1200x1200 dpi only possible with Windows drivers,
600x600 can be reached w/o particular software.
The difference is visible, but only slightly, so
the Functionality got "Mostly"<p></i><p>
Do the following:<p>
Set the resolution on the front panel to "Prores 1200", not
to "Fastres 1200". When you use CUPS with HPs PPD file, turn
off "Fastres 1200" in the printer configuration
options.<p>
Try the generic PostScript PPD file which comes with KUPS 1.0 or newer.
driver/md2k.xml
===============
The driver files contain information about drivers. There are a few
things, but the two biggies are the prototype and the printers list
md2k
# According to the Adobe specifications for PPD files every PPD file
# must contain a unique DOS-compatible file name (the "*PCFileName"),
# a file name with an up to 8 characters log base name and an up to 3
# characters long extension, and upper and lower case letters being
# considered as equal. As every PPD file is for a printer/driver combo,
# we let the last 2 characters being provided by the driver entry:
M2
# The drivers listed by the OpenPrinting database are usually not
# developed by OpenPrinting. Most free software printer drivers come
# from independent projects, initiated by peopke who want to get their
# printers to work under Linux, some other drivers come from the
# printer manufacturers. So even if OpenPrinting hosts a downloadable
# package of the driver the development of the driver is not part of
# OpenPrinting. Therefore every driver entry has to contain a
# reference to the developers of the driver, where the driver can be
# actually downloaded. The appropriate link goes into the tag:
http://plaza26.mbn.or.jp/~higamasa/gdevmd2k/
# The driver XML files can contain the following tags to describe the
# driver's properties, so that a user can easily find the driver which
# is most suitable for him. The properties are shown in the gray
# driver info boxes on the OpenPrinting web site and they are also
# supposed to be shown by printer setup tools when they offer to
# download a driver from OpenPrinting. It is especially important to
# supply them if a downloadable driver package or PPD files are
# supplied.
# Supplier's name, internationalization (with .........)
# optional
# SpliX project
# Does the driver come from the printer's manufacturer or from a third
# party. The third form tells also the manufacturer names of the
# printers which are from the manufacturer which developed the
# driver. If there are also printers from other manufacturers
# supported (like for the PCL driver HPIJS) then the OpenPrinting web
# site does not show this driver as manufacturer-supplied on the pages
# of the printers of other manufacturers.
# OR OR
# HP|Apollo
# License name. Here should be put the common short name or
# abbreviation if the license is one of the common free software
# licenses. Otherwise it should contain something short and
# descriptive, for non-free drivers simply "Commercial". The license
# name can be internationalized with language tags
# (.........).
# GPL
# The license text does not need to be supplied for common free
# software licenses. It should be supplied if:
#
# - The license is not free ( tag set)
# - The driver has patent issues ( tag set, describe the
# patent issues here in that case)
# - The license of the driver is free but none of the common licenses
# ( tag not set)
#
#
# ...
#
#
# License texts can also be linked from external sites:
#
#
#
# ...
#
# License texts have to be given always as plain text, UTF-8-encoded.
# Mark with this tag whether the driver is non-free software
#
# All driver entries without this tag are considered to be free
# software.
# This tag tells whether there are any patent issues with the driver
#
# The absence of the tag tells that the driver is free of patent
# issues.
# If a driver entry provides a and is or with printer setup tools which download this
# driver are supposed to present the license text and ask the user
# whether he agrees with it.
# Printer manufacturers could want to package their drivers for
# different market regions (Europe, Asia/Pacific, Americas, ...) as
# the markets demand different capabilities of printer drivers and
# different user-settable options (CJK-language-related stufff for
# example). So there could even be two different driver flavors for
# the same printer but adapted to different regions. To express these
# driver properties there are special tags.
# For each flavor of the driver a separate driver entry (driver XML
# file) has to be supplied. There is no requirement of certain
# properties of the driver flavors to be equal or not. Especially the
# printer lists can contain printers which are not in all flavors, for
# example if printers are only sold in certain regions. To mark which
# entries are belonging together one adds a group tag to each XML
# file, with the same group name, but the name must be different to
# the names of all already existing groups. A locales tag contains all
# language/country codes for which the driver flavor is intended:
# epson-inkjet
# de en_UK en_IE fr_FR es_ES
# The codes in the locales taghs should be different for the group
# members, to allow to automatically select the most suitable flavor
# if the detected printer is supported by more than one flavor.
# For downloadable drivers support contacts should be given, so that
# users get informed before they do the download and do not complain
# at their OS distribution vendor if the driver downloaded from
# OpenPrinting does not work. The human-readable string for the
# support contact can be internationalized with language tags
# (.........).
#
# SpliX forum at SourceForge
# LaserStar Support
#
# This is an internationalized short description of the driver,
# typically one line, to be used in the gray driver info boxes, in the
# driver overview list, and also by printer setup tools. If a driver
# entry is for a development version of a driver, tell it here, as the
# long description is not shown everywhere.
#
#
# Driver for Samsung SPL2 (ML-1710, ...) and SPLc (CLP-500, ...) laser
# printers
#
#
# If there are downloadable packages for this driver entry on the
# OpenPrinting web site, usually packages whose name are the driver's
# name (in all lowercase, "_" replaced by "-", optionally preceeded by
# "openprinting-" or "openprinting-ppds-") are considered to belong to
# this entry. If the package names are different, or if it depends on
# the version number whether a package belongs to this entry, a
# section has to be supplied. It is also required if the
# driver package is split up into several components, to assign scopes
# to them. Scopes can be: "general", "gui", "printer", "scanner",
# "fax", ... Uses the "general" scope if packages are not split. Wild
# cards are the same as used for file masks in the shell (NOT regular
# expressions). They must match both Debian and RPM package file
# names. Note that between file name and version number is a "-" for
# RPMs and a "_" for Debian packages.
#
# *splix*1.[0-9].[0-9]*
#
# It is possible to give absolute paths which can point to external
# sites, as for example the site of a printer manufacturer, so that
# the package can be hosted there but auto-downloaded via
# OpenPrinting. Important is that these packages are auto-downloadable
# LSB packages and that a non-interactive download is provided (should
# also work with utilities like "wget"). Licenses which the users have
# to agree on have to get supplied in the driver XML file. Printer
# setup tools are supposed to ask the user for agreeing if the driver
# is marked as non-free or with patent issues.
# Example for packages provided by an external site:
#
# http://download.example.com/printerdrivers/*canon-inkjet*
#
# The section should make it easier for a user to
# compare different drivers by giving some technical properties and
# ratings (0...100) for common document types, system load, and
# execution speed. The higher the number, the better the driver
# performs here. It is not required to supply all items. Items can be
# left out or can stay empty. sections of the same
# format can also be used in the entries in the
# list, to describe exceptions for particular printers. If an item is
# left out or empty there, the appropriate item in the general
# section is used, so only the items which are
# different for the given printer need to be listed.
#
# 1200
# 1200
# OR
# 100
# 100
# 100
# 80
# 50
# 90
#
# Not all tags are required here, if the valur for a tag is not known,
# the tag has to be left out. Do not put empty tags (like
# "" or "" here.
# The section describes everything needed to execute the
# driver.
# Sometimes it is possible that a driver depends on another driver,
# for example a manufacturer publishes a core driver which is
# completely free software and supports most of their printer. In
# addition, he publishes closed-source plugins for the core driver to
# support additional printers where they cannot open the driver code
# for IP reasons. He wants to link in all his driver packages for
# automatic download with the tags. To make everything work
# correctly he creates one driver entry for the core driver and one
# for each plugin. The printers which do not need the plugin get
# listed as supported by the core driver, the printers needing a
# plugin are listed as supported by the plugin. To avoid that then
# only a plugin gets automatically downloaded one adds a
# tag to each entry of a plugin, to the beginning of the
# section:
# gutenprint
# hpijs
# The version attribute is optional, without, every version is
# accepted. Optional relationships (>=, <=, =, <, >) allow to not only
# accept the given version. The '>ยด and '<' have to be replaced by the
# appropriate XML entities, as described earlier here for other text
# in the XML files. More than one tag is allowed.
# Driver types are
#
# : The driver code is compiled into Ghostscript
#
# : IJS plug-in. These are raster drivers which connect
# to the IJS interface of the renderer, usually of
# Ghostscript but also of pdftoijs or others. The
# interface is based on pipes and is bi-directional.
# It makes the driver independent of the renderer.
#
# : CUPS Raster driver. The raster driver standard
# introduced by CUPS. The renderer generates the CUPS
# Raster format, a bitmap format optimized for printing,
# and it gets piped into the driver.
#
# : OpenPrinting Vector driver. DLL and IPC interface for
# plugging printer drivers into the renderer. This is
# the only solution of mudular printer drivers for high-
# level graphics (vector) PDLs.
#
# : A uniprint driver, consisting of one or more .upp
# files for Ghostscript.
#
# : The driver code is a separate executable and the
# driver does not fit into the groups listed above,
# usually either a filter which converts generic
# bitmap output of Ghostscript to the printer's
# language, or a wrapper around Ghostscript.
#
# : A driver which has PostScript as output (for
# PostScript printers). It usually does not call
# Ghostscript but only applies the user's option
# settings to the data stream. But Ghostscript can
# be called here, too, as for downgrading to a lower
# PostScript level or for handling PDF input.
#
# The driver type only provides information for the web pages (or
# driver auto-download facilities of printer setup tools), it is not
# used when generating PPD files.
# The driver's section can also contain a
#
#
#
# which suppresses the usage of PJL options (options which send PJL
# commands to the printer). This is done with drivers where the driver
# itself already produces a PJL header and where the PJL options
# defined for the supported printers would badly interfere. In most
# cases this is not needed, as foomatic-rip merges the PJL headers of
# the driver and of the PJL options.
# And the driver's section can also contain a
#
#
#
# This suppresses the inserting of page accounting code (for CUPS)
# into the PostScript data stream. Some drivers lead to unexpected
# behavior with that. Especially for the generic PostScript drivers
# (which do not use Ghostscript in most cases) the accounting code
# should not be inserted.
# The prototype defines what command the backends run to drive this
# printer. It must take at least PostScript, preferably both PDF and
# PostScript on stdin and generate the printer's native language on
# stdout. Various %A, %B, etc substitution "spots" are specified; this
# is where substition options will be placed.
gs -q -dBATCH -dSAFER -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=md2k%A%Z -sOutputFile=- -
Part of the gdevmd2k-0.2a package by Shinya Umino. The web page and
documentation are in Japanese.
<a href="/clippings/MD5000-translation.txt">Here</a>
is an English translation of the driver's web page, and <a
href="/clippings/alpsmd.txt">here</a> is the README from the
driver package.
# if there is only a and not a entry,
# foomatic-rip will feed both PostScript and PDF into the command line
# defined with , otherwise for PostScript input the
# command line is used and for PDF input the
# command line. Both are defined the same way and the
# same command line snippets are inserted from the option settings.
# If there is only a defined, PDF will only be fed in if
# the command line begins with "gs " (this means Ghostscript is called
# and Ghostscript understands both PostScript and PDF) and there are
# no options based on inserting active PostScript code into the input
# data stream. Otherwise foomatic-rip converts PDF input to PostScript
# at first and feeds the PostScript through the command line.
# The printer list is a simple list of printers that this driver works
# with. Alternatively, one can tell that a given printer works with a
# given driver also by a list in the printer's XML file (see
# above).
printer/Alps-MD-1000printer/Alps-MD-1300printer/Alps-MD-2000printer/Alps-MD-4000
# In the printer list it is also possible to place comments or
# exceptions in the driver's functionality (see above) specific to a
# certain printer/driver pair:
#
# printer/HP-LaserJet_4050
#
# to 1200dpi
#
#
#
#
#
# Note that printer/driver relationships can also be expressed by
# adding the driver to the lists of the appropriate printer
# XML files.
source/opt/2.xml
================
# Every option exists independently from printers or drivers, because
# they might apply to arbitrary combinations of printers and/or
# drivers. In practice, some drivers have wholly unique options
# (gutenprint for example), while others (lots of generic basic
# Ghostscript drivers, for example) share some options.
# To allow custom page sizes to be used one has add a choice with the
# "" being "Custom" to the "PageSize" option (example
# below). This choice will be treated as the custom page size. When
# the user selects this choice, he has to provide the width and the
# height of the page in addition. These values are converted into
# PostScript points (1/72 inches) and inserted into placeholders in
# the "" of this choice. The "" should
# contain a placeholder "%0" for the page width and "%1" for the page
# height. Alternatively the "" can contain two zeros
# ("0") from which the first will be replaced by the page width and
# the second by the page height. Then one gets Adobe-compliant entries
# for the custom page size in the PPD files and one can set a custom
# page size with the following commands:
# CUPS: lpr -P huge -o PageSize=Custom.500x750cm bigposter.ps
# LPRng: lpr -P huge -Z PageSize=Custom.500x750cm bigposter.ps
# GNUlpr: lpr -P huge -o PageSize=Custom.500x750cm bigposter.ps
# LPD: lpr -P huge -JPageSize=Custom.500x750cm bigposter.ps
# PPR (RIP): ppr -P huge -F "*PageSize Custom" --ripopts 500x750cm
# bigposter.ps
# PPR (Int.): ppr -P huge -F "*PageSize Custom" -i 500x750cm bigposter.ps
# PDQ: pdq -P huge -oPageSize_Custom -aPageWidth=500
# -aPageHeight=750 -oPageSizeUnit_cm bigposter.ps
# No spooler: foomatic-rip -P huge -o PageSize=Custom.500x750cm
# bigposter.ps
# Here is an example for a custom page size setting:
#
#
# Custom size
#
#
#
# Custom
#
#
# %0 %1
#
# The entry
# 0 0
# would have the same effect as the of the example.
# For numerical (int, float) and bool options there is no
# section. Instead of this section numerical options have tags to
# specify minimum and maximum value:
# 10.0
# 0.0
# For the %s in the a number, either the user's choice
# when he has specified this option or the default value is
# inserted. Only numbers between the minimum and the maximum and in
# case of int options only integer numbers are allowed.
# Bool options can be set or not be set. There will be
# inserted if they are set, nothing if they are not set. A %s in the
# is not allowed, there is nothing to insert for it. As
# in the option's constraints one can use 0 for not
# setting the option by default or 1 for setting it by default.
# Bool options need the specification of a name for the case when they
# are not set. This will be used by GUIs and in PPD files:
#
# CorrectBlack
#
# This name should not contain spaces, ":", or "/".
# See below for string, password, and composite options.
Composite Options
-----------------
This is an option type to make it easier for users to choose the best
settings for a certain printing task, even if the driver has very many
options. The idea is to have an enumerated choice option which does
not directly modify something in the driver's command line but sets
several of the other options.
One example is the "PrintoutMode" option which will be made available
for all printer/driver combos which have at least one option regarding
the printout quality or document type.
The possible choices should be the same for every printer and driver,
so that users (especially newbies) can bring their printers in the
right mode by choosing one easy to understand item from a menu instead
of having to switch several cryptic driver options. For now the
choices are the following:
Command line GUI Intention
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Draft Draft Very fast, ink/toner-saving printout
Normal Normal Quick standard quality printout
High High Quality High quality for plain paper
VeryHigh Very High Quality Highest quality for plain/inkjet paper
Photo Photo Highest quality for photo paper
These choices can also have one of the following modifiers:
Modifier Intention
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
.Gray Grayscale printing on a color printer
.Mono Monochrome printing (no grayscales, black or white)
Examples:
Command line GUI Comment
---------------------------------------------------------------------
High.Gray High Quality Grayscale
Photo Photo Color photos on color printer
VeryHigh.Mono Very High Quality Monochrome Really black text in
highest quality on inkjet
printer, not suitable for
halftone images.
Normal Normal Standard color in 300/360 dpi
on normal paper, grayscale
on black-and-white printers
Not all choices/combinations of basic choices and modifiers must be
present. Often modes are simply not available on certain
printer/driver combos, as "Photo" on most lasers. It is highly
recommended to have "Normal" available, though (and having this the
default).
The GUI names can have additional remarks in parantheses, for example
when manual intervention (other cartridge, photo paper) is needed.
To add such an option to the database, one only needs to add an option
XML file like the one below into the db/source/opt directory of the
database. The file db/source/opt/pcl3-PrintoutMode.xml could look
like this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The shown option is only an example, it is neither in the BZR
repository nore will it work with all printers which use the "pcl3"
driver. You can paste it into a file (make the s being
one line, the items separated by spaces) and copy it to db/source/opt/
to try it out.
The "" tag for the execution style specifies it as a
composite option. The and are meaningless in a
composite option and the ""s contain a space-separated
list of all settings of which the pre-made configuration represented
by this choice consists. Every choice of the composite option must set
EXACTLY THE SAME individual options. In no choice it is allowed to
leave out one of them. These individual options are the member options
of the composite option. Not all options of a driver/printer combo
need to be member options of the composite option. It is not allowed
to have one option being member of more than one composite option. The
composite option must be an enumerated choice option, the member
options must be enumerated choice or boolean options. Member options
can even be composite options, so composite options can be nested.
It is enough to add a composite option as shown. The PPD generator
(getppd() in lib/Foomatic/DB.pm, package "foomatic-db-engine") will
take care of the rest. It will
- Order all member options into a group (PPD group, see "Option
Grouping" below) named after the composite option.
- Add to every member option the choice "Controlled by ''" and make this choice the default. If this
is chosen, the composite option will set the value for this
member, depending on what value is chosen for the composite
option. If the user chooses something else than "Controlled by
''" the member option does not obey
the setting given by the composite option. So the advanced user
can also set the member options individually.
- If necessary the and of the composite
option is replaced by other values in the PPD file, so that the
composite option will be stuffed into the PostScript data stream
always before all its member options. Do not give "0" as the
order number to any of the member options.
A composite option can also span only one (but not zero) member
option. This is for example done with the "PrintoutMode" option of the
HPIJS driver ("foomatic-db-hpijs" package). This driver has only one
option for setting resolution and quality, but this options has
sometimes many choices with rather cryptic names. The "PrintoutMode"
maps to the most important choices with the above-mentioned names, and
in addition, these names are the same as of the "PrintoutMode" options
of other drivers, so the user finds the important printing modes more
easily.
The facility of composite options can also be used for other things
than for a "PrintoutMode" option, for example a finisher could be
controlled by a composite option (to have the most common finishing
tasks as "Bound booklet", "Stapled booklet", "Letter in envelope",
...).
Forced Composite Options
------------------------
Forced composite options are very similar to composite options, but the
user cannot set the individual member options, but only the composite
option (the user is forced to use the composite option). This allows
options acting at two or more places.
Example: A printer driver is a filter which converts a generic bitmap
produced by Ghostscript to the printer's native format. The command
line for converting PostScript to the printer's language could look like this
gs -q -dBATCH -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=bitcmyk -r600 -sOutputFile=-
- | filter -size=x
where and is the page size in points (1/72
inches). In addition, Ghostscript needs to know the page size. For
this one usually puts the following PostScript code into the
PostScript input file:
< ]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice
where and is again the page size in points. So we
need two options for setting the page size, one PostScript option to
set the page size for Ghostscript and one command line option to set
the page size for the filter. The user would have to change both when
he wants to print on another paper size, and it does not make sense to
have different settings for the two. So one could make the "PageSize"
option a composite option of the two, but then the GUI exposes an ugly
"PageSize" group with the two individual options. To avoid this, one
uses a forced composite option ("Forced" because the user is forced to
use the composite option, the individual member options are not
accessible).
Assuming that the name of the PostScript option for the page size is
"GSPageSize", the name of the page size option for the filter is
"filterPageSize" and both have the choices "A4", "Letter", and
"Legal", the forced composite option named "PageSize" would look as
follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This looks exactly like a usual composite option and works also the
same way. The only difference is that instead of an "" tag "" is used. If the PPD generator finds
such an option, it hides the member options by only using
"*Foomatic..." keywords to describe them, not any standard PPD
keywords as "*OpenUI...", "*OrderDependency...", ... This way
PPD-aware graphical frontends do not see the member options but
foomatic-rip has all information from them to run the driver
correctly.
String and Password Options
---------------------------
These options allow the user to supply nearly arbitrary strings
(within limits of length, characters and structure) to the printer
driver, for example names of color calibration files, fax numbers,
passwords for confidential jobs, ... Frequently needed strings can be
added as enumerated choices, so a frontend can show the option as a
combo-box. The enumerated choices are also used for frontends which
only support options as defined by the PPD spec. So having enumerated
choices is highly recommended for most of these options.
In the XML database string and password options look similar to
enumerated choice options. The differences are the option types
"string" or "password" and the additional tags to restrict the
possible strings.
The "" tags give a length limit, it should once not
allow strings longer than around 100 characters, as otherwise
foomatic-configure could generate a line longer than the allowed 255
characters in the PPD file when setting the default value, and second,
which is very important, it should not allow strings which are too
long for the printer filter or driver so that buffer overflows cannot
occur. Not using the "" tags makes arbitrary long
strings to be accepted, this is not recommended.
With "" the accepted strings can be restricted to
contain only the characters given in the list. This restrictions does
not only avoid that the filter chokes on a wrong option, it serves
mainly for security reasons, for example to avoid a string like "|| rm
-rf * ||" for a command line option. So if the option prototype does
not quote the string, command delimiter characters, I/O re-directors,
and shell special characters (";", "|", "&", "<", ">", "*", "?", "[",
"]", "{", "}", "(", ")", "$", "\", "'", """) should not be allowed. If
the string is quoted by the option prototype, the closing quote
character and the backslash should not be allowed, so that one cannot
escape from the quoting. The allowed characters are checked by a
"/^[...]*$/" expression in the Perl scripts, so ranges with "-", a
list of forbidden characters with a leading "^", or special characters
as "\w", "\d", "\x07", ... are allowed. To allow a backslash, one has
to escape it by using two backslashes ("\\"). To allow a "-" it must
be in the end of the list to not make it defining a range and for a
"^" must be placed at any other place than the beginning of the string
if it should be explicitly allowed.
"" allows also to restrict the structure of the
string, as it defines an arbitrary Perl regular expression (see "man
perlre") which has to be matched by the string. This serves also for
having only strings which are usable by the filter and which do not
destroy the command line structure. With this one can for example
forbid a backslash as the last character to avoid escaping the closing
quote of the option prototype. Regular expressions are applied via a
'/.../' expression in the Perl scripts. To apply the pattern matching
modifiers "i", "m", "s", or "x" (as "/.../i" for case-insensitive
matching) begin the regular expression with "(?)" (as
"(?i)..." for case-insensitive matching).
It is highly recommended to use at least one of ""
and "", as otherwise all characters are allowed in
the user-supplied string and so a malicious user can execute arbitrary
shell or PostScript commands. If both tags are used, both conditions
have to be fulfilled.
Note that for the character lists and regular expressions in the XML
files the following character substitutions have to be done:
< --> <
> --> >
" --> "
' --> '
& --> &
Here is an example for an option to supply the file name for an ICC
profile for the "foo2zjs" driver (this option is neither in the CVS
for the Foomatic database nor tested with this driver):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This option allows to choose either one of the given file names,
either by using the ""s or the ""s, or one
can give every arbitrary other file name with a maximum length of 127
characters, only containing letters, digits, periods, underscores,
dashes, and slashes, and not having a slash in the end (no
directories). Note that in Perl the period must be escaped by a
backslash to be taken literally, otherwise it stands for an arbitrary
character. The regular expression for blocking out strings ending with
a slash is "(?" may
differ from the "", the string inserted at the "%s"
place holder in the "" is always the "",
independent whether the user supplies the "" directly or
the "". In this example both
lpr -o ICM= file.ps
and
lpr -o ICM=None file.ps
supply an empty string as the value of the ICM option.
For the default value there must be an enumerated choice, if there is
none, the PPD generator will create one. So this entry is allowed
(this option is only an example, it is not in the CVS of the Foomatic
database):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The default value is an empty string here. So the PPD generator will
add a choice for the empty string.
Normally, automatically added choices get the same "" as
the string itself, but if the string is not allowed as an option name
in a PPD file, the "" will be modified. For an empty
string (as in the example above) "None" will be used and all
characters except numbers, letters, and underscores ("_") will be
replaced by underscores.
The option types "string" and "password" are treated exactly the same
way by the PPD generator and by foomatic-rip, the different names
are only for frontends to know whether the input field should display
the typed characters or asterisks on the screen.
CUPS Custom Options
-------------------
CUPS defines several extensions to the PPD specifications to support
the functionality of modern printers:
http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.4/spec-ppd.html
There are extensions for so-called "Custom Options" where instead of
given enumerated choices freely choosable custom values can be
supplied. As Foomatic's numerical, string, and password options can be
implemented as CUPS custom options in the PPDs as well, the PPD
generator does both implementations in the PPDs. There are the
"*Foomatic..." keywords generated, as before, but also the CUPS PPD
extension, consisting of the keywords "*Custom