On Tue 08 Mar 2016 at 11:39:51 +0200, Jarle Aase wrote: > The printer is configured and receives the print jobs from my PC. However, > it prints nothing.
Printing would depend on the configuration on the PC; PPD, driver, backend etc. > I am very skeptical to installing 3rd party deb packages from hardware > vendors. I don't think they have quite the same focus on security that I > have. Basically, if a network printer require proprietary drivers to work - > then it is broken by design. I have used lpd + postscript for around 20 You are not bothered about the security of the closed source firmware on the printer but are concerned about a closed source driver on the PC/ > years, and it just works. It's fine if Brother want to embrace newer > technologies and provide a better UX, but not providing a fall-back to open > standards seems weird. > > Anyway - I think this printer supports both pcl and postscript. So unless > Brother deliberately is looking for a fingerprint or something in the > payloads, it should be possible to trick it into printing my documents. > Hopefully it's just a matter of understanding what the printer expects to > receive in order to print. Theoretically, a Generic PCL or PostScript PPD could be used with this printer. You'd lose its specific printer options of course. > One alternative is to install a dedicated VM with Debian and use it as a > print server. However, since I use both laptops and PC's, it's not > convenient. The MFC-J5720DW supports AirPrint. Depending on which applications you print from you do not require cupsd on the PC, so you could dispense with a PPD and driver.
