[Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Tim Waugh]

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Hi,

Last week I put together a small program to simply display the filter
pipelines that would be used for each configured input format and each
likely output format (CUPS raster, PostScript, PDF).

This is useful for sanity-checking changes to CUPS filter costs, to
check whether changes to pipelines are intentional or accidental.

It's based on testmime.c and is very simple. See what you think:
  https://gitorious.org/cups-filter-check

Tim.
*/


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Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Till Kamppeter]

Should we perhaps make this part of cups-filters?

   Till

On 12/16/2013 06:10 PM, Tim Waugh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Last week I put together a small program to simply display the filter
> pipelines that would be used for each configured input format and each
> likely output format (CUPS raster, PostScript, PDF).
> 
> This is useful for sanity-checking changes to CUPS filter costs, to
> check whether changes to pipelines are intentional or accidental.
> 
> It's based on testmime.c and is very simple. See what you think:
>   https://gitorious.org/cups-filter-check
> 
> Tim.
> */
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture
> 

Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Michael Sweet]

Till,

I was thinking I could just add an option to the cupsfilter program (--dry-run or something) that displayed the list of filters that would get used.


On Dec 16, 2013, at 12:17 PM, Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmail.com> wrote:

> Should we perhaps make this part of cups-filters?
> 
>   Till
> 
> On 12/16/2013 06:10 PM, Tim Waugh wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Last week I put together a small program to simply display the filter
>> pipelines that would be used for each configured input format and each
>> likely output format (CUPS raster, PostScript, PDF).
>> 
>> This is useful for sanity-checking changes to CUPS filter costs, to
>> check whether changes to pipelines are intentional or accidental.
>> 
>> It's based on testmime.c and is very simple. See what you think:
>>  https://gitorious.org/cups-filter-check
>> 
>> Tim.
>> */
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Printing-architecture mailing list
>> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture

_______________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair

Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Tim Waugh]

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On Mon, 2013-12-16 at 18:17 +0100, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Should we perhaps make this part of cups-filters?

Yes, sure -- or Michael Sweet's suggestion of enhancing cupsfilter would
also be fine. It's quite nice to be able to loop over all of the
configured MIME types though. I guess it can be done in a shell script
(reading *.types)... it just might not be very pretty:

grep '^[^[:space:]#]' /usr/share/cups/mime/mime.types | (while read t;
do set $t; echo $1; done) | sort

Incidentally, while playing around with it I noticed the only route from
application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript -> application/vnd.cups-pdf is
via image/tiff. Is that intentional? I expect any printer capable of
handling PDF can also handle PostScript, and that path works fine at
less cost.

Tim.
*/


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Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Michael Sweet]

Tim,

On Dec 16, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com> wrote:
> ...
> Incidentally, while playing around with it I noticed the only route from
> application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript -> application/vnd.cups-pdf is
> via image/tiff. Is that intentional? I expect any printer capable of
> handling PDF can also handle PostScript, and that path works fine at
> less cost.

I'm guessing the reason for this is Adobe's stupid enforcement of PDF form content protection - some forms can't be processed by Ghostscript or Adobe's own PS distiller to generate PDF because of restrictions that are placed in the PostScript code.  But it is A-OK to RIP the content for printing/export to an image... :/

But yes, if the printer reports support for PostScript then application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript should go to application/vnd.cups-postscript without a side-trip through TIFF and PDF...

_______________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair

Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Till Kamppeter]

On 12/16/2013 06:54 PM, Michael Sweet wrote:
> Tim,
> 
> On Dec 16, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> Incidentally, while playing around with it I noticed the only route from
>> application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript -> application/vnd.cups-pdf is
>> via image/tiff. Is that intentional? I expect any printer capable of
>> handling PDF can also handle PostScript, and that path works fine at
>> less cost.
> 
> I'm guessing the reason for this is Adobe's stupid enforcement of PDF form content protection - some forms can't be processed by Ghostscript or Adobe's own PS distiller to generate PDF because of restrictions that are placed in the PostScript code.  But it is A-OK to RIP the content for printing/export to an image... :/
>

For going this way I suggest to go

PostScript --gstoraster-> CUPS Raster --rastertopdf-> PDF ...

as first, imagetopdf/imagetoraster supports only single-page TIFF and
HPLIPs pstotiff filter only produces monochrome low-res TIFF for faxing.

rastertopdf needs to get created anyway for making CUPS a complete IPP
Everywhere implementation, as IPP Everywhere printers need to take PWG
Raster as input format. See

http://www.cups.org/str.php?L4266

> But yes, if the printer reports support for PostScript then application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript should go to application/vnd.cups-postscript without a side-trip through TIFF and PDF...

Yes, this I already cover in cups-filters,
application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript is converted into
application/vnd.cups-postscript through pstops, without PDF detour.

   Till

Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Alex Korobkin]

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I'd love to have this in the cups-filters package. Great idea.


2013/12/16 Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>

> Hi,
>
> Last week I put together a small program to simply display the filter
> pipelines that would be used for each configured input format and each
> likely output format (CUPS raster, PostScript, PDF).
>
> This is useful for sanity-checking changes to CUPS filter costs, to
> check whether changes to pipelines are intentional or accidental.
>
> It's based on testmime.c and is very simple. See what you think:
>   https://gitorious.org/cups-filter-check
>
> Tim.
> */
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture
>
>

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Re: [Printing-architecture] Useful utility: cups-filter-check

[Michael Sweet]

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All,

I filed CUPS STR #4325 to track adding this to the cupsfilter command:

    https://www.cups.org/str.php?L4325


On Dec 27, 2013, at 2:55 PM, Alex Korobkin <korobkin+op@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd love to have this in the cups-filters package. Great idea. 
> 
> 
> 2013/12/16 Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>
> Hi,
> 
> Last week I put together a small program to simply display the filter
> pipelines that would be used for each configured input format and each
> likely output format (CUPS raster, PostScript, PDF).
> 
> This is useful for sanity-checking changes to CUPS filter costs, to
> check whether changes to pipelines are intentional or accidental.
> 
> It's based on testmime.c and is very simple. See what you think:
>   https://gitorious.org/cups-filter-check
> 
> Tim.
> */
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture

_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair


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