PDF printer

[nadrach]

The cups-pdf package is removed as obsolete in the upgrade to Maverick, breaking the PDF printer by removing the backend but not the printer installation, which has to be removed manually. So what now is available to create a PDF printer in 10.10 and beyond ... because for a netbook, a PDF printer is an essential for things like online orders and receipts, especially Ebay and Amazon, printing quickly to PDF as a fixed electronic record for longterm storage, which can be put to paper long after the site has dumped records.

Why abandon cups-pdf when it was so useful?

[Fenix-TX]

Re: PDF printer

I have cups-pdf installed on my Maverick system. Search the package: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-cache search cups-pdf

[nadrach]

Re: PDF printer

Yes, I can reinstall the package, but it will be removed as obsolete at the next upgrade, et cetera, and eventually will not install at some future point ... so my question remains ... what has been created to replace it as a valid and current package ... or are we going the route of commercial OS vendors and arbitrarily declaring a package obsolete without bothering about replacement functionality ... does not seems like good open source practice to me.

Considering that many administrations are now following the EU lead and declaring PDF, as well as ODF, to be a default format for government documents, in preference to formats with commercial constraints ... dropping a package that creates compliant format documents from any source, ones that generally carry their fonts embedded, and thus display or print consistently, independent of machine or printer ... is unhelpful.

[Fenix-TX]

Re: PDF printer

I can't see anything about obsolete. In all upgrades there are packages removed as obsoletes, but it doesn't mean that this package will not be there, it's only about the version and default apps. It always happen with a lot of packages that are normally installed on the system, so don't be worry about that, you will have cups-pdf a lot of years.