REGRESSION: Do not cripple the "*Nickname:" entries of the PPDs

[Till Kamppeter]

In HPLIP 3.9.2 the *ShortNickname: and *Nickname: are heavily shortened, like "PhotoSmart" being replaced by "PS". In the comments in the source code one can read that this was done to fulfill the 32-character maximum for the *ShortNickname:.

Note that the specs only limit the length of the *ShortNickname: and not of the *Nickname:. So please do not shorten the *Nickname: as this one is used for human-readable interfaces, especially printer setup tools. The shortened model names are not only more difficult to read, but they also make the model names of the HPLIP PPDs differ from the model names of other PPDs (PostScript, pxlmono, ...) and so the same printer appears at different places (often far apart) in the model lists and so users can easily get mislead away from the best driver (which is HPIJS in most cases). Also automatic matching mechanisms get mislead and assign inferior old drivers.

Can you please leave the *Nickname: entries without shortening? I appreciate very much if you could send me a patch before Thursday, April 2 (deep freeze for Ubuntu Jaunty release).

Thanks in advance.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Sorry, Jaunty final freeze is April 9.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

But it would be nice if you could give me the patch before April 6, as on April 7 I am leaving for the OpenPrinting Summit.

[David Suffield (david-suffield)]

Till,
The names were shortened in order to pass cupstestppd (ie: 1.3.9). Cupstestppd flags any ShortNickName that is longer than 31 characters as a error.

We have "big-deal" customers that require the PPDs to pass cupstestppd. So we are meeting customer requirements with the shorter name.

If you can get cuptestppd to relax the ShortNickName error (ie: flag it as a warning) then we can make the change back to a more meaningful name otherwise our hands are tied.

Note in hpijs.drv we do not have explicit ShortNickName and NickName values. Both are created by the "ModelName" field.

-dave

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

You can do the following:

Take the model name plus "hpijs" (and perhaps the version number) as *Nickname: and apply the abbreviations only for the *ShortNickname:. Then we have nicely human-readable names for the printer setup tools and no errors from cupstestppd.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Till uploaded a fix to this.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package hplip - 3.9.2-3ubuntu4

---------------
hplip (3.9.2-3ubuntu4) jaunty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/nicknames-device-ids.dpatch: Added patch from upstream
    for not shortening the *NickName: entries in the PPDs and not to replace
    " " by "_" in the device IDs in the PPDs (Upstream bugs: LP: #349539,
    LP: #349547).

 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:56:49 -0700

[Srikanth (srikanth-lokare)]

For all postscript, hpcups and hpijs ppd's, the nicknames are now complete and not crippled.

Thanks and Regards,
Srikanth Lokare