Suggested Improvments for CUPS Test Page

[michaelrsweet]

Version: -feature
CUPS.org User: dstranathan

The current CUPS page is pretty handy (color wheel, imaging info, interpreter info etc), but Id like to see some new critical network and host info added the test page. Here are some examples of things Id like to see:

1. host name of the system that printed the test page
2. user name of the person who printed the test page
3. Related PPDs, drivers and resources related to the printer/queue
4. Time and date of submitted test page job
5. Relevant printer/queue meta data such as location etc
6. Printer protocol used for test print (IPP, RAW, LPR, etc)
7. Host metadata such as OS version/build, etc

Please chime in with your "wich list" too.

Take a look at the current CUPS 1.3.x page from Mac OS X and then take a look at a typical Windows XP test page. Combine the 2 and you would have some very comprehensive info (minus all the win32 gnarly DLL info of course).

Too much info for a single page? Perhaps we need 2 test pages? A "Standard" page like we have today in CUPS 1.3 and an "Extended" or "Advanced" test page for more detailed information.

If there are ways to customize this in 1.3.8 let me know. Id like to see your ideas, templates, custom code etc. If its fairly easy to implement/customize, Id like to test it in my environment.

I posted this request on the Apple RADAR (bug Reporter) site too, via my ADC account.

[michaelrsweet]

CUPS.org User: mike

You'll see some of this information (PPD filename and version, location, make and model) on the new CUPS 1.4 test page, and you can add username and host by editing the new testprint file.

For earlier releases there isn't much you can do - the test page is custom PostScript code that is only able to report information from the interpreter, which is one of the reasons we added a new "CUPS banner file" format (application/vnd.cups-banner) to allow a program to generate the content instead. This also works around the PS normalizer margin issues on Mac OS X which result in a "full bleed" page being reported.

We'll keep this request around for future CUPS releases (too late for CUPS 1.4); I'm not sure about adding some of the information (OS version and build are not generally relevant when there are 1000 Linux distros that report the same information, for example), and I'm not keen on showing the device URI since it can contain sensitive information. It might make sense to list the extra files (filters, profiles, etc.) referenced by the PPD file, and we can add the user and host info to the default testprint file as well.

[michaelrsweet]

CUPS.org User: mrmazda

I'd like the test to be elaborate enough to be indicative of whether success printing from apps is to be expected. As is, it is not. As https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=683476 indicates, I can print test pages, but the ability to print from apps (worked in openSUSE 11.3, Fedora 14, _buntu 10.04) has disappeared since some change made to CUPS less than a year ago which made all recent Linux versions I've tested since then (_buntu 11.04, Fedora 15, openSUSE 11.4) impossible to use to print from apps from.

[michaelrsweet]

CUPS.org User: mike

I think we have added as much info as we will for this in CUPS 1.5.x, so closing as "resolved"...