[Printing-architecture] Driver for native XPS printers urgently needed

[Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmail.com>]

Hi,

in the segment of high-end laser printers there is a trend to XPS-only 
printers and this is a well-known protocol/PDL (Ghostscript/GhostPDL can 
be used with it, as both input and output format). Therefore it should 
be possible to develop a working generic XPS printer driver soon.

I got aware of this by this thread on the CUPS user mailing list:

Printing to native XPS printers using CUPS

on

http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/thread.html

or

http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027167.html
http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027168.html
http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027171.html
http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027172.html
http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027173.html

Ghostscript has already an "xpswrite" output device, but the device is 
missing the needed flexibility. Pages are converted to Tiff with 96 dpi 
for sending, Only RGB color is available as color space, ...

I want to request as a new feature for GS 9.19 that Ghostscript's 
"xpswrite" device gets a real printer driver where you can choose a 
resolution, color/bw, ...

Then I would add a gstoxps filter to cups-filters and a PPD for a 
"Generic XPS printer" to not need to list such printers as Paperweight 
and make it difficult for users to print from Linux on modern printers.

WDYT?

    Till