************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * January 2004 * * * ************************************* News and Comments We've got great plans for 2004. New minor releases of DB/C DX and DB/C FS are planned for the next few months. And hopefully, DB/C DX 14 and DB/C FS 4 will be released by the end of the year. Our policies regarding maintenance and support of old versions of DB/C DX and DB/C FS have been rather vague in the past. What exactly does "maintenance" mean? And what does "support" mean? We've tried to explain these terms in an updated Support Information page at our web site. The most important change described on the Support Information page is that we now define how long an old release will be supported. An old release will be supported for one year after the next major release. For example, DB/C DX 12 will be supported until August 2004, which is one year after DB/C DX 13 was released. In this context, "supported" means that, if necessary, we will make bug fixes to DB/C DX 12. In general, bug fixes will only be applied to the current minor release unless someone requests that a particular bug fix be put into the older release. The availability of much older releases of DB/C DX and DB/C FS will continue as it is now. That is, releases as far back as DB/C DX 10 and DB/C FS 2 will continue to be available for download. They won't be supported, but the software will still be available. This month's newsletter is an overview of the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS). We plan to include basic support for CUPS in DB/C DX 13.1. If you are interested in helping us test CUPS support in DB/C DX, let me know. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) Printer management has been an area where UNIX has traditionally been deficient when compared with mainframes and PC-based networks. Two similar flavors of UNIX printer sharing, LPD and LP, have been used for the last 25 years. LPD and LP provide very basic capabilities that only marginally meet the needs of many users. Michael Sweet set out to address the need for robust UNIX printer management in 1997. In 1999, his company released two software products - the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) and ESP Print Pro. CUPS is free (GPL license), and ESP Print Pro is a commercial product. ESP Print Pro provides many advanced features and support for thousands of printers, but probably isn't necessary for most UNIX installations. CUPS is included in many distributions of UNIX and LINUX, including Red Hat 9 LINUX and Mac OS X 10.3. Printer drivers are included in these distributions for many printers in use today. LPD and LP are very limited. Client software communicates with LPD and LP via primitive TCP/IP protocols without authentication or encryption. Print files have to be in the exact format that a printer supports, such as "line printer" format or Postscript format. Minimal notification and error reporting is provided. Remote (Internet) printing isn't available. At about the same time that CUPS was being created, the IETF (the group that oversees Internet standards) created several RFCs (standards) that define the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). CUPS and IPP work together to provide a modern, full function printing environment that addresses all of the limitations of LPD and LP, and provides many advanced features. IPP is based on HTTP. One interesting side effect of this is that it is easy to add end user browser support in an IPP printer. Today many printers that support IPP also provide status query and feature setup via HTTP - that is, your IPP printer is a web server! Try http://nn.nn.nn.nn from your browser to your Ethernet-connected HP printer (where nn.nn.nn.nn is its IP address). CUPS works in the traditional client/server model. A client program communicates with a CUPS server via TCP/IP. The destination printer can be connected to the computer running the CUPS server, it can be a standalone Ethernet printer, it can be connected to another CUPS server, or it can be anywhere on the Internet! Printers are given logical names when they are configured for use in a CUPS server. Printers can be grouped into one or more classes. Client programs can then target either a specific printer or a class of printer as the destination for a print job. Queue status and job control is available to the client program, via command line tools, or through a web interface that is built into the CUPS server. And for backward compatibility, CUPS can emulate LPD. You can find out more about CUPS at www.cups.org. Michael Sweet's book, "CUPS: Common UNIX Printing System", is the definitive source for configuring and using CUPS and IPP. Look for more about CUPS and DB/C DX in future DB/C Newsletters. ****************************************************************************** DB/C DX Class Schedule Class: DB/C DX Fundamentals Date: February 23-25, 2004 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com. ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you monthly, just send an email message to 'dbcnews-subscribe@dbcsoftware.com'. 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