The problem has nothing to do with proprietary drivers, etcetera but rather the extremely fractured system of printing on non MS Windows based systems. I have had extensive conversations with representatives from Brother and while they do include PPD's and other assorted files for some of their printers, they claim it is just not financially feasible to do so for all their products, ie, scanners, copiers, etcetera due to the multiple platforms that they would be required to support. They need only support one when working with MS Windows, If the *nix community would come together and devise one consistent printing system, they would be inclined to support it. They informed me that due to the way FreeBSD likes to due things differently than anyone else, they would never in all likely hood support it directly. This is not a problem with the manufacturers, it is a fundamental flaw in the way *nix handles printers, copiers, FAX machines, scanners, etcetera.
You might want to check out this URL: <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting> Specifically this portion for starters: PDF is the standard print job format from CUPS 1.6.x on All important desktop applications (GTK/GNOME, Qt/KDE, LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, ...) send print jobs in PDF and not in PostScript any more by default. In addition, a complete CUPS filter chain to process print jobs in PDF is available and used. -- Carmel _______________________________________________ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
