Examination of a Linux Gui, w/color commentary

[jkinz at kinz.org (Jeff Kinz)]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 07:58:45AM -0500, Mark Komarinski wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 09:34:58PM -0500, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> > In an Ironic side twist, coincidental to one of the recently active threads
> > in gnhlug-discuss, ESR is examining the issues he encountered whilst
> > attempting to configure a printer using the CUPS GUI config tool.
>  
> AFAIK, CUPS has no GUI config tool.  There's the web interface and
> the CLI.  Looks like he's describing how Red Hat bolted their GUI
> configurator onto CUPS.

Hi Mark.
Yup, you're right.  And he has made other similar errors in the article.
See the user linux discussion list for details:
	http://lists.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss

He is correct about the difficulty his "Aunt Tilly" would have 
trying to use the existing printer over the small network were correct
(Using that interface).

The principles he is espousing about how such an interface would work
better by keeping the non-tech user in mind are something that I
generally agree with, for all technical equipment.

I have a few systems built here (RH 7.2 and K12LTSP based on RH 9) but 
none of them seem to have KDEprint on them.  I would like to take a look
at it so I'm going go install it.  Its nice to know some of the tools
are designed better.

In the meantime - Does KDEprint show the user a list of the printers
available on the network so that user's can select the one they are
trying to use?

> Probe the network for what other kinds of systems are out there?  What
> is he smoking?

I assume from this comment that you don't like the idea of probing the
LAN for equipment inventory info.  This seems to have become a standard
administrative techniques especially for network equipment.

I understand the concern for extra traffic on the network but I'm
wondering what technique you would use to have a system become
automatically aware of other printers.  Should there be some type of
service that the printer gets registered with so that systems requesting
information about whats available can do it with a minimal amount of LAN
traffic?

(I'm aware that ESR is sometimes considered to be a sort of P.T. Barnum
of the Linux world. Thats OK because it does result in more non-Linux
people becoming aware that there is an alternative to Windows.)

-- 
Jeff Kinz, Open-PC, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA.  
"jkinz at kinz.org" is copyright 2003.  
Use is restricted. Any use is an acceptance of the offer at
http://www.kinz.org/policy.html.