Ubuntu
hplip package

  1. Bug #493282
  2. Comment #2

Comment 2 for bug 493282

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote : Re: hplip-data ballooned by 5MB in lucid

The change is in the PostScript printer PPDs supplied by HP. They have internationalized them, which means that all option menu items are translated into around 10 languages now. This has blown up these PPDs.

The internationalization is based on a CUPS PPD extension (http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.4/spec-ppd.html) for which I have made some propaganda recently when communicating with the printer manufacturers, as they will lead to translated option and choice names in the Common Printing Dialog (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/commonprintingdialog), one of my main projects at OpenPrinting. It also provides translations for the web-based printer setup tool of CUPS (http://localhost:631/).

I cannot remove the PostScript PPDs from the HPLIP package, as there is a very big user base with PostScript printers from HP. They are also not auto-downloadable at OpenPrinting as HP is maintaining them in HPLIP, which comes with all distributions. I have removed the HP PPDs from OpenPrinting some time ago as no one kept them up-to-date.

Possible solutions are:

Do not ship the openprinting-ppds package. This would free some space, but for any non-HP PostScript printer the user must be connected to the internet for setting up the printer, as the PPD will get auto-downloaded from OpenPrinting.

Do not ship HP's PPDs and post them on OpenPrinting again. This would require that the PPDs at OpenPrinting are quickly updated after each release of HPLIP (or even before, in cooperation with HP). This would mean that users of HP PostScript printers need internet connection to set up their printers.

Currently, we make use of OpenPrinting to save space by letting the PPDs from Ricoh family and OEM getting auto-downloaded from OpenPrinting.

In the future we will get more space occupation with PPD files. More manufacturers discover internationalization and more manufacturers provide PPD files at all.

I am thinking about opening a Google Summer of Code project next year about highly compressing ready-made PPDs shipping with Linux distributions, based on a PPD generator (program in /usr/lib/cups/driver) which uncompresses them on-the-fly.