We have resources to help with printing under free operating systems like GNU/Linux and the BSDs or under commercial UNIX-like systems such as Solaris and Mac OS X. Looking for configuration or driver help? Try our CUPS Quick Start or look for your printer in the OpenPrinting Database. For more detail, try Till's Tutorial. If all else fails, ask a human in the forums. Researching a printer purchase? Simply browse our database. Looking for software? We host Foomatic, printer driver packages, and some other programs. Want to help? Here's how.

OpenPrinting participating in the Google Summer of Code 2010

Also in 2010 the Linux Foundation got accepted as a mentoring organization by Google and as one of the workgroups of the Linux Foundation we are offering student projects again. The OpenPrinting projects are listed on our project ideas page and some general info you find here.

These are our projects:

Compression of locally installed PPD repositories: Develop a dompression method especially designed for PPD (PostScript Printer Description) to make the footprint of printer hardware support in Linux distributions vastly smaller.

Modifying Desktop Applications so that they use the Common Printing Dialog: Up to 2 students, one for KDE/Qt, the other for GNOME/GTK, can work on modifying the GUI toolkits and desktop applications so that the original printing dialogs get replaced by the Common Printing Dialog. One feature-complete and easy-to-use printing dialog for all applications!

Use SQLite for locally installed Foomatic Printer/Driver database: If you are setting up a printer under a modern Linux distribution, it always takes some time before you get the list of drivers (or before the printer setup tool selects the driver automatically). This is due to the slowness of the XML database used for the printer info. With a proper SQL database this will get much faster.

Vendor WIN32 driver made available to Linux applications: Make many more printers working under Linux by creating a wrapper framework for the manufacturer's Windows drivers, like the ndiswrapper for WLAN cards.

JTAPI implementation: The OpenPrinting workgroup has designed a Job Ticket API (JTAPI) already. Your task will be writing an implementation of this API (libjtapi).

JTAPI JDF Job-Ticket Implementation: Implement the JDF Jocb Ticket standard as free software using OpenPrinting's Job Ticket API. You will work in a team with the student working on "JTAPI implementation".

We appreciate your application as student to work on one of these or on your own printing-related projects. Google accepts student applications from March 29 on up to April 9.

Let us have a great GooGle Summer of Code 2010.

Second Generation of OpenPrinting Database Pages Online!

We have switched over to a new generation of web pages to browse and manage our printer/driver database. The pages are not only looking nicer and better fitting into the general web site of the Linux Foundation, they give also much quicker access by being backed by a relationale database and two mirrored servers and we will not get so many unuseful printer entry contributions any more as login with a Linux Foundation account is required for contributors now.

In addition we have now facilities for driver developers and printer manufacturers to easily contribute driver and printer entries via a web interface.

More info. Start browsing: Printers, Drivers

Enjoy the new OpenPrinting database web pages!

OpenPrinting Summit 2010 on April 14-16 in San Francisco

As last year, we will hold the OpenPrinting Summit together with the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco. Mark April 14-16 in your calendars.

The most important developers and representatives for the Linux printing infrastructure, printer drivers, printing dialogs, color management, printer manufacturers, Linux distribution vendors, LSB, ... will meet and talk about the following topics:

• How to design printer drivers for distribution-independent LSB-based packages and the Common Printing Dialog (mini seminar)
• Color Management
• Common Printing Dialog
• Printing in Chrome OS
• State of the art of the printing development

Registrations and hotel room reservations for negotiated rates are available. Please visit the event's web page.

For Developers

The goal of the OpenPrinting workgroup is to develop and promote a set of standards that will address the complete printing needs of embedded, mobile, desktop, enterprise, and production environments, including management, reliability, security, scalability, printer feature access and network accessibility. This is achieved by

• developing standard APIs for printing

• collecting information about printers and printer drivers and providing the drivers in distribution-independent packages

• integrating them in existing operating systems

• providing the tools for publishing printer drivers in distribution-independent packages

• Switching to PDF as Standard Print Job Format

OpenPrinting has merged with the former linuxprinting.org and provides now a one-stop location for printing with Posix-style operating systems. OpenPrinting organizes several meetings throughout the year to bring the important people on the area of printing together. Meetings recently held are:

• OpenPrinting Summit 2009 in San Francisco, April 2009

• OpenPrinting Meeting in Tokyo, July 2008

• OpenPrinting Meeting on the LF Summit in Austin (TX), April 2008

• OpenPrinting Meeting in Tokyo, Nov 2007

• OpenPrinting Summit 2007 in Montreal, Sep 2007

• OpenPrinting Meeting on the LF Summit in Mountain View (CA), June 2007

• OpenPrinting Summit 2006 in Lexington (KY), Oct 2006

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