[Bug 1830516] Re: Avahi Printer advertisements are wrong (Avahi or CUPS?)

[Trent Lloyd]

This is a bug in CUPS ultimately, it's driving Avahi using the D-BUS API
(as opposed to manual service files in /etc/avahi/services, this is only
really used for a sysadmin to manually add services, most other types of
advertisements such as printers are expected to use the API to advertise
it).

Marking this against cups instead, you may also wish to consider filing it upstream:
https://github.com/apple/cups

** Also affects: cups (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: avahi (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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Title:
  Avahi Printer advertisements are wrong (Avahi or CUPS?)

Status in avahi package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in cups package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  First I do not know if this is a CUPS issue or an Avahi issue.

  I do not know whether Avahi or CUPS generates the files nor where they
  are. They are not in /etc/avahi/services, where I expected to find
  them, so they must lie somewhere in CUPS.

  I have a printer installed in CUPS. I must use the driver from a
  different model to make it work. Among other things I want avahi and
  CUPS to show the printer name, consistently unless related to the
  print driver used.

  avahi-browse shows

  Xerox_Phaser-6125 @ Hostname (correct)

  Later however in Txt fields avahi-browse shows "product=(DocuPrint
  C525 A-AP)" .......... "ty=FX DocuPrint C525 A-AP v1.0" (incorrect
  printer model but is the driver in use. Those fields should relate to
  Product and type, not driver)

  The problem above I suppose is the "trickle down effect" from how CUPS
  names the printer. In the CUPS web GUI I see

   Queue Name Description	Location	Make and Model	Status
  Xerox_Phaser-6125	Xerox_Phaser-6125	Home	FX DocuPrint C525 A-AP v1.0	Idle - "Waiting for printer to finish."

  The Make and Model is not Make and model at all, rather it comes from
  the driver used. I know it is commonplace to use say an HP LaserJet PS
  driver when you want PostScript , like back in the day when I printed
  to a LaserWriter, so I am not the only one that sees this.

  Also, I think there should be a proper "representation" in the txt
  fields as well icon as is done with AirScan/eSCL scanners
  advertisements "representation=http://HOSTNAME./images/Icon.png" as I
  believe some apps will use this icon of the actual printer. This field
  should not be required but optional. These days we connect many
  different OSs to Linux and expect Linux to "do it all", and we still
  want it to look pretty and correct. I know Apple in some cases uses
  the "representation" field. This "representation" field too would have
  to tricke down from CUPS to Avahi, as Avahi would only point to the
  file at http://HOSTNAME:631/images/Icon.png. So it needs to hosted on
  the CUPS web GUI.

  I also recently read that some distros are moving away from the GUI
  utilities to configure printers in favor of the CUPS web GUI , making
  this more relevant than ever.

  Description:	Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
  Release:	16.04

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