After meeting some printing developers on the Foomatic workshop on the LinuxTag in June 2003 and further discussion on the foomatic-devel mailing list several ideas came up which lead us to develop the this new major version of Foomatic.

The most important new features of Foomatic 3.0.0 (compared to 2.0.x) are:

• One unique filter (foomatic-rip) for all spoolers

• For all spoolers PPD files are used to provide the printer capabilities information

• Foomatic-generated PPD files are absolutely Adobe-compliant

• With foomatic-rip manufacturer-supplied PPD files of PostScript printers can be used with every spooler

• foomatic-rip processes PostScript according to Adobe’s DSC (Document Structuring Conventions)

• With PDQ one can print a wide assortment of file types now, and even set up raw printers

• Custom page size support with all spoolers

• Information about non-printable margins is put into the PPD files

• Option settings cannot only be applied to the whole document, but also to selected pages

• Options are ordered in logical groups for a more clear arrangement in graphical user interfaces

• “PrintoutMode” option to select from pre-configured quality levels (“draft”, “normal”, “high”, “photo”), sets all quality-related options accordingly

• String and password options (for example for fax servers or for user restrictions)

• Several improvements on the linuxprinting.org web site

See the announcement for more detailed information about the new features.

To know how to use the new Foomatic via this web site or by installing the whole system on your machine is described on our Foomatic page. From now on there are only the filters and PPDs of Foomatic 3.0.x available on this web site.

Note: If you are using CUPS 1.1.19 with Foomatic you need Foomatic 3.0.0 or later as this CUPS version requires fully Adobe-compliant PPDs.

This is not the end of the development of Foomatic. Bug reports, feature requests, and contributions are welcome. Have a look at our Contributions page and post your comments on the “foomatic-devel”list/newsgroup on linuxprinting.org.

Happy printing!