
A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print - mqt
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html
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DanielBMarkham
I love the decoupling the driver from the PC idea, but I can't help but wonder
where this is all heading.

Isn't Google just re-inventing the mainframe, where they own the mainframe and
the rest of us are customers, er dumb terminals? In other words, is this an
open standard where any two web-enabled devices can communicate? Or is it a
Google-managed service ("we return the status of the print job back to you")
where we're yet again investing in the success of Google? Seems like the
latter to me. Perhaps I misread it.

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cpr
They're proposing standards for all the levels, so, in theory, other "cloud
printer" providers could do what they do.

So, in theory, it's not lock-in to their cloud.

In practice, who else is going to do this?

I suppose if there were a common OSS solution that one could run per-company
or per-workgroup, that'd be great.

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leej
open standard is not open just because there are no loyalties. a standard is
open when it's managed by a consortium or task force. OpenGL is one, for
example.

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HappySushiCo
Hey, if I enable adwords on my printed documents, will Google pay for the ink?
Do that and i'm sold :)

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milkshakes
i really really really want dropbox to print to this. it would be nice to
print from a phone or a browser, without having to open the actual file.

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cpr
I sure wish they'd propose something similar for scanners.

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pak
+1 to this. I wish there were a unified standard for networking scanners at
all, actually. The majority of business scanners have arcane features to
Email, FTP, or SMB-share the documents they scan. SMB is the usually only
thing that invites practical use on a small business network, and the
scanner's implementation of the protocol is almost always poor. I've
encountered $5k copiers that could only copy to SMB shares on Windows XP,
mysteriously failing for Server 2003 or Server 2008. I don't even want to
think about trying it with Samba.

Networking a copier is no afternoon job, either. I've seen businesses where
setting up their copier on Ethernet was such a bother that they just hook up
the fax line instead and fax everything to their own eFax number whenever they
need a PDF scan of a document.

My dream is that I could plug in an IP address/hostname to any scanner and I
press Scan. The scanner contacts a daemon running on the host on a well-known
port and protocol (if it's the first time, the host presents a dialog or
something to confirm pairing) and then the file goes shoop over the network
into a folder of my choosing.

Why does this not exist! In a networked world, scanners need to be more like
faxes, except there is no fax equivalent on the TCP/IP level.

~~~
andrewtj
I want something less complicated than that. I want to push the Scan button,
open my web browser, select the scanner from it's list of Bonjour (aka DNS-SD)
discovered web services and then browse, save and delete scans from it's web
interface.

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ShabbyDoo
Where was this ten years ago when I needed it? I worked for a electronic
medical records ISV, and we had requirements like: Print referral letters on
regular paper, chart notes on paper with a special blue line on the edge, and
prescriptions on a special printer. Our thick Java Swing client was at the
mercy of an admin to configure each workstation correctly. Even then, we could
not easily do things like print to an alternate printer when the primary one
was not working.

I had envisioned some sort of document printing service which could receive a
request from our back-end services to render and print, say, a RTF document
using a specified set of print rules (paper requirements, micro-geographic
preferences, etc.).

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rythie
Seems a lot like IPP.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol>

I can already print from anywhere in the world to our work printers which
operate on a CUPS server with authentication and SSL. I don't need a special
driver, a generic print Postscript or PDF one works.

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jonasvp
My former employer spun off a company based on exactly this problem:
<http://www.thinprint.com>

They did very well back then and probably still do. If I had any stock,
however, I'd probably sell around the time Cloud Print looked like it would
get traction...

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samratjp
Hmm, I could see this working in an Airport Express USB print kind of way; but
too bad, Airport Express still requires the printing origin computer to have
the printer drivers. If Apple (or anyone else for that matter) Express can
support cloud print, that would be so much nicer.

~~~
milkshakes
dd-wrt maybe?

~~~
samratjp
Thanks - a good find.

P.S: Love the profile blurb about being lost :-)

~~~
milkshakes
thanks :)

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tmugavero
This seems like a step backwards to me. Why are they even wasting cycles on
this when we're obviously heading to a paperless society? Maybe they should
make cloud fax services too.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Because we've been "heading to" a paperless society for 35 years now, and
we've still not reached it.

Sometimes a piece of paper is just _better_ than a laptop/tablet/PDA/phone.

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macrael
Google adds more data to their store. Will Google be retaining the documents
to be printed in any way?

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papachito
If you readed the linked article, it says it could work offline, the whole
protocols are open source.

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ash
I'm not sure, but according to the patch, only client and proxy are open
source. Cloud print _service_ seems to be closed.

<http://codereview.chromium.org/1566047/show>

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naner
How would this practically work? Do we need new printers for this?

~~~
pufuwozu
Read <http://code.google.com/apis/cloudprint/docs/overview.html>

_And, finally, the number one question people ask is, "How do the printers
communicate with Google Cloud Print?" The answer is, "It depends on whether
the printer is a cloud-aware printer or a legacy printer."_

They're proposing a proxy for legacy printers in Chromium (that makes
Windows/Mac OS X/Linux printers available to Cloud Print). They're also
proposing that new printers add native Cloud Print functionality.

For Chromium OS, it seems like it will only be able to use new printers or
legacy printers with specific proxy devices.

