two Bonjour/Avahi configuration design flaws

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

system-config-printer has three design flaws when configuring network printers found through bonjour/avahi:

1) When providing a list of discovered printers to select from, only the product names, but not the announced bonjour name is displayed.
Problem: If there are more than one printers of the same model in the same network, they are all listed as e.g. "Lexmark E260dn" and indistinguishable.

The printers allow to change their bonjour/avahi name to arbitrary strings, e.g. something like "Lexmark E260dn first floor" to make them human readable. But system-config-printer does not use this name as part of the list to choose from, so you still don't know which entry belongs to which printer.

2) Printers can provide further information, such as their location, in the txt record of their bonjour response, e.g. "note=first floor". This is also not displayed.

3) But then, once a printer is chosen, system-config-printer uses this bonjour name to build the printer URLs (like ipp:...), which is a bad idea again, since these bonjour names are changed sometimes. Instead, the hostname as given in the bonjour response should be used to build the URLs, because that's what it is good for.

regards

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: system-config-printer-gnome 1.3.8+20120201-0ubuntu8.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-35.55-generic 3.2.34
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-35-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.1
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Apr 25 14:06:47 2013
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
Lpstat:
 device for Lexmark-E260dn: dnssd://Lexmark%20E260dn%20Berlin%2FLounge._ipp._tcp.local/
 device for PDF: cups-pdf:/
MachineType: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD U90/U100
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
Papersize: a4
PpdFiles:
 Lexmark-E260dn: Lexmark E260dn
 PDF: Generic CUPS-PDF Printer
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/tcsh
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.0-35-generic root=/dev/mapper/elek-root ro quiet splash thermal.nocrt=1 vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: system-config-printer
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-03 (356 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 12/01/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 4.6.3
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: U90/U100
dmi.board.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.board.version: Ver.001
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.chassis.version: Ver.001
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr4.6.3:bd12/01/2009:svnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:pnU90/U100:pvrVer.001:rvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:rnU90/U100:rvrVer.001:cvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:ct10:cvrVer.001:
dmi.product.name: U90/U100
dmi.product.version: Ver.001
dmi.sys.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

BTW, this is not an ubuntu, but an upstream bug. However, the upstream developers website asks to report bugs through the distribution's reporting mechanism.

regards

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.