Bug 93822

Summary:	the alternate pdftops filter for cups should be optional and not the default
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Chris Smith <chris>
Component:	[OLD] Printing	Assignee:	Printing Team <printing>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	major	CC:	gurligebis
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Chris Smith 2005-05-24 09:52:04 UTC

The cups-1.1.23-r3 ebuild introduces the mandatory use of an alternate and
non-official pdftops filter replacement; basically a wrapper script that calls
xpdf's pdftops utility.

The large problem is that xpdf is now required for a cups installation and
anything else needed to support it, such as t1lib, gnu-gs-fonts-std,
ghostscript, and freetype at a minimum. Certainly not welcome in many server
installations.

Changes such as this can also cause support issues.

Additonally, it also appears that to be really useful, the replacement filter
should use a companion pdftops.conf file (available from the same site as the
filter) that can be further tweaked by the user. This companion config file is
not installed, nor is the user made aware of its existence.

Can the alternate pdftops filter be useful? Most likely to some. But it should
not be forced on us. An "altpdf" USE flag could be implemented to allow users
the option.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




Request that the alternate pdftops filter is not used by default.
If it is deemed so desirable please add a use flag for it.
Remove the rdepend of xpdf unless that altpdf flag is set.

Comment 1 Martin Lutz 2005-06-07 00:06:31 UTC

same in net-print/cups-1.1.23-r4

Comment 2 Heinrich Wendel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2005-06-07 01:58:10 UTC

those three dependencies now depend on the truetype use flag in xpdf-3.00-r9, 
they are used for nicer fonts